


The Happiest Days of Our Lives

by orphan_account



Category: South Park
Genre: Bombs, Canon Compliant, Dark with a happy ending, Dissociations, F/M, Internment Camps, Israeli-Palestinian War, La Resistance, M/M, Neo-Nazism, PTSD, Rage Blackouts, Terrorism, WWIII, drugs and alcohol, rape is not kyman, they ate the mem'bries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In 2017, as member berry consumption skyrockets, Herbert Garrison declares himself a three-term president and makes the monumental decision to ally the United States with Palestine in the Israeli-Palestinian War of 2018, a choice that leads to the beginning of World War III. In an attempt to quell the subsequent riots, the United States Government establishes Jewish internment camps.Nine years later, Kenny and Wendy are wanted criminals for the activities of La Resistance, and Cartman has joined the guard in a fruitless attempt to find Kyle.





	1. In the Flesh?

The streets of Alphabet City are dark in the dingy period after dusk falls but before the street lamps are turned on. Everything is deserted save one newsstand plastered with the most recent cover of Time Magazine. A boy and girl, both doing the leftist salute of the Spanish Civil War, smirk out from the glossy page. They make a mesmerizing couple - the boy tall with shaggy blonde hair and magnetic blue eyes, and the dark-haired girl with high cheekbones and an elegantly jutting clavicle.They’re standing in a poorly decorated gymnasium in front of a balloon arch that must have been set up for photos, suggesting this photo is from prom or the like. He has foregone a suit jacket to roll up the sleeves of a lilac button down, and she is wearing a wide-legged neon orange jumpsuit with a thick ribbon resting on her hips like a belt. Underneath them, in bold font, is printed, “The Faces of Revolution,” and the article has been given a ten-page spread.

Turning a corner to an ominously shadowed avenue tells a different story. Along the red brick walls of a building are pasted a string of Wanted posters. The same boy has the corner of his lip quirked up as he forever stares confidently into the camera of his mugshot. A significant reward has been set for anyone with information regarding his location or activities, and the same bounty is on the head of his companion, who smiles warmly on the poster next to him in what is most certainly her senior portrait from high school. A series of posters next to him show different people with varying rewards offered for their apprehension. They include a boy with the curled blonde hair of a Disney prince, a prematurely aged man with sunken eyes and a cigarette between his lips, a boy with inky black hair and a uniform for the US military, a cheerful brunette, a girl in a gothic black lace dress, a rotund older man with skin leathery from tanning, another man of roughly the same age dressed in head-to-toe leather with a ball gag around his neck like a choker, and Jesus. 

There is graffiti covering every inch of the wall surrounding the posters. A full sized, uncannily accurate depiction of the blonde boy with fist held high in the air covers a significant portion of the wall. Around it, people have spray painted words of encouragement and pithy slogans. Stretching across the top of the wall in bloody red paint is: ‘Revolutionaries of the world, unite!’ with another fist directly to its left. Someone has written the classic ‘re-love-ution,’ under which a smartass has drawn an arrow pointing at the words and a quickly scrawled ‘gay.’ Other less generic sentiments like ‘Garrison can go to Heil’ and ‘the United States of Hamas’ cover any remaining empty spaces.

The street’s singular pedestrian stops in front of the blonde boy to look him over carefully. His blue eyes dart towards the girl at his right for a moment, reading the reward for her capture with an impassive expression. He tucks his own copy of Time Magazine into his backpack and hooks his thumbs under the unadjusted straps, casting the criminals a final look before pulling a hood over his dark hair and darting down a narrow side street.

Besides the back door of an unhygienic pizza parlor, there’s nothing to see except the backside of buildings. He walks up and down the alley slowly until he settles on an overflowing dumpster and begins examining the walls around it. With a triumphant “aha!” he finds the handle for a leftward-opening door and tries in vain to open it before accepting that locks are a fairly effective invention.

He steps back from the door, frustrated. A quick glance around tells him that the street is completely isolated, but he doesn’t want to risk the attention of rattling or knocking on the door. Everyone inside would be furious, and that isn’t the first impression that he wishes to create. He chews the inside of his cheek thoughtfully before giving the door another try - still locked.

As if on cue, the door swings open, and the infamous blonde stands in front of him with a smile a mile wide. He pulls the other boy into a hug, clapping him on the back fraternally, before ushering him inside. 

“How did you know I was here?” The first boy asks, following his friend down a long, poorly lit hallway. He steps back as his friend crouches down at the end of the hallway to open up a trapdoor in the floor. He nods for the first to continue down.

“Camera on the dumpster,” the second explains. “Oldest trick in a book.”

“Seems like it’s at risk of being thrown out,” he says before climbing quickly down the ladder into a low-ceilinged but bright and crowded room. 

The blonde jumps off a fairly high rung of the ladder a second after him. He throws an arm around his friend’s shoulder and announces loudly, “Ladies and gentleman - Stan Marsh!” 

Most people in the room look up with some degree of a smile on their faces. The only holdouts are the Disney prince and cigarette smoker from the posters that Stan had seen. The cigarette smoker says, in a thick French accent, “I do not give a shit,” and his compatriot snorts in agreement.

The dark-haired girl barrels into Stan’s chest, almost knocking him over in her eagerness to give him a suffocating hug. Stan laughs and says, “Hi, Wendy,” as she bounces on the balls of her feet and goes so far as to clap her hands a little.

“Stan!” She shrieks, pulling him into a second hug. “Kenny didn’t tell us you were getting in today!” She shoots the blonde a nasty look, and he shrugs.

“Didn’t know.” He pauses and smiles. “Wendy, Stan is coming today.”

She gives him an exasperated look before tugging Stan over to a table with a large map spread across it. The boy in the military uniform from the posters looks up and says in a nasally voice, “How was Canada? Clyde’s trying to expat.”

The cheerful brunette, Clyde, frowns at him. “Just long enough to get some maple syrup and come back, eh!”

“Yeah, you’ll never be back,” the other says with a roll of his eyes. 

Stan extends a hand to him. “Good to see you again, Craig.”

Craig looks ambivalent. “It’s only been nine years.”

“‘Only!’” Wendy repeats. “I can’t believe you don’t have an accent after all that time.” She shakes her head. “You’ve missed so much. I've missed you so much!”

“Well, I was thirteen, and I don’t think you pick up an accent at that age,” Stan says uncertainly. “Missed you too, Wen.” He rests his palms on the table while he reads the map, jumping a little as Kenny abruptly slings an arm around his shoulders once again and looks the map over. 

He points to a spot on the map, his brow furrowed. “Gregory, why do you have Russia blocking Port Said? I thought they were going to be in the Red Sea.”

“Saudi Arabia’s cut a buck fifty for another DDG destroyer,” Craig cuts in. “They’ll be at Tewfik.”

“Jordan’s approving a bill for some new submarines,” Gregory adds. “That will hopefully be in effect very soon.”

“Yes, because China hasn’t wasted three years deciding whether to expand their military a lot or an absurd amount,” the smoker says scathingly. He scoffs. “Bureaucracy.”

Stan stretches across the table to extend a hand. “I don’t think we’ve met, actually. I’m Stan.”

The other boy ignores his hand. “We have met. I helped you save your flatulent idols.”

“This is Christophe,” Gregory explains apologetically. “He’s a mercenary.”

Christophe scoffs again. “I was a mercenary. I haven’t seen any money coming my way in a very long time, have I?” He looks at Stan and adds, “I prefer the Mole.”

“‘Mole’ or do you want me to include the article?” Stan asks.

“The Mole,” Christophe repeats.

Stan frowns a little like he’s trying to remember how he knows Christophe. His eyes light up with realization, and he asks, “Didn’t you die in my friend’s arms?”

“Apparently not,” Christophe says. He blows a ring of smoke in Stan’s face, and Kenny laughs. 

“Chris and I have a ton in common, don’t we?”

“I do not approve this nickname,” Christophe says. “It suggests familiarity which we do not share, Kenny.”

There is the thud of the trapdoor being pulled back, and a figure dressed in head-to-toe black climbs slowly down the ladder. He pulls down a hood and runs his fingers through short black hair before taking stock of the room. He points at Stan and says, “This is new.”

Stan meets his mistrustful gaze, a gasp catching in his throat at the sight of the blood red bands that surround his pupils. The boy is deathly pale with an angular face and collar buttoned conservatively up to his neck. Stan feels a weird sense of familiarity, but he can’t put his finger on why so he settles for saying, “Stan Marsh,” and extending his hand again.

He is once again snubbed as the new arrival crosses quickly to join Christophe and Gregory on their side of the table.

“Any news?” Gregory asks, clearly the only one of this friend group that smiles.

He sniffs disparagingly. “They’re adding military police to the guards. I believe that Kenny’s very successful raid last month has them frightened.” He looks up at Kenny and says knowingly, “However did you escape ten internment guards without a scratch on you? It was a miracle.”

“Definitely miraculous,” Kenny agrees, mirroring the boy’s knowing look. “Stan, this is Damien. He’s a guard at the camp in Woodstock. He’s our inside man.”

“How legit are we?” Clyde gushes. “Man on the inside!”

Stan looks at Kenny seriously. “Isn’t that where Cartman’s stationed?”

“It is,” Damien confirms. “I have the pleasure of working with your fat friend every day. Then I get to ride on a bus for hours to spend my nights with a group of wanted terrorists.”

“We’re not terrorists,” Wendy snaps. “We’re freedom fighters.” She looks at Stan and assures him, “We haven’t terrorized anyone.”

Damien smiles and says, “That’s not what the conservative media has led me to believe. Last I heard you were blowing up churches in the Bible Belt.”

Kenny scowls, and Wendy asks, “Why the fuck would we be in the Bible Belt?”

“Oh, shit! I remember you!” Stan exclaims as realization takes hold. “Aren’t you Satan’s son?”

Damien taps a finger to his nose conspiratorially, and Stan shoots Kenny a curious look. “You don’t see an issue with the antichrist being a member of your organization?”

“He’s a good dude,” Kenny says ambivalently. “Satan’s backing us hundo p.”

Damien nods. “Not even Hell would side with the US on this one.”

“Satan’s in La Resistance,” Stan says, more a statement than a question.

“Super Best Friends, too. They’re gone with Al and Slave to figure out how to sabotage next year’s member berries crop - do we have a word on that, by the way?” Kenny asks, looking over to Gregory, who seems to be the source of most answers. 

“Joseph Smith’s ice breath seemed like it was able to damage them, but they were fine when they defrosted,” Gregory says hopelessly.

“There is no way to beat the member berries,” Christophe adds darkly. “We are wasting our time. We need to stop consumption.”

“Or stop production,” Wendy says quietly. She looks thoughtful for a second, then she and Kenny react as one, clutching the other’s arm and exclaiming, “Stop production!”

Kenny curses. “Jesus, this was so fucking obvious!”

“Jesus’s insidious weeds idea was good,” Clyde says defensively. “It didn't work, but.”

Wendy pulls Kenny over to another map on the wall with purple circles scattered across the world, which Stan assumes must mark the spot of major member berry farms. They buzz over this for awhile, pointing at certain areas and whispering frantically back and forth. They both flinch as if startled when Gregory clears his throat to interrupt. 

“You do know who farms the majority of all domestic member berries, don’t you?” He asks like he’s afraid to upset them. “We can’t just stop production until we deal with the issue at hand.”

“No,” Kenny says with some finality. “We’ve tried this from a million angles. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!”

“It is the definition of insanity,” Wendy agrees.

Kenny points at Damien, who points at himself questioningly. “Do the camps have any facilities that would halt member berry production if damaged or stolen?” 

“Jews,” Damien says brutally. Stan winces, and Gregory wrinkles his nose at Damien in disapproval. Damien gives him a look and says, “What? I’m supposed to torture them all day long then immediately be sympathetic whenever I’m here? It’s not that easy to compartmentalize millions of degraded, emaciated, bald little aliens, and I grew up in Hell.” He spreads his arms out wide. “Sorry for being slightly jaded about working at an internment camp!”

“If your outburst is over,” Christophe sneers, “then we can get back to the member berries, no?”

Damien glares around the room, challenging anyone to question his morality, before he turns back to Kenny. “No. There isn’t anything. The prisoners do all the work, and the berries can reproduce without any human interference.”

“And you can’t exactly free the Jews until the member berries are gone,” Craig says. “So it seems like we’re shit out of luck.”

Kenny shakes his head wildly. “No. No, no, no. This is not the end of this idea. Damien, you need to learn more!”

“The fat one already finds it suspicious that I grilled him on gassing techniques only a week before the camp got raided,” Damien says, raising an eyebrow skeptically. “I can lie low or we can all be discovered by Eric Cartman. Your choice, McCormick.”

Clyde raises a hand. “I think that we shouldn’t let Cartman discover La Resistance.”

“Seconded,” Craig grunts. 

“Cartman is working directly on the gas chambers?” Stan asks, aghast.

Damien shakes his head. “They’re a side passion of his.” He smiles faintly. “Once he filled the real showers with this smelly inert gas. People got very freaked out. It was...” He pauses to read the room and corrects himself. “... very inappropriate. It was very inappropriate.”

“I’m worried about your soul,” Wendy says honestly.

“I’m pretty sure I don’t have one,” Damien replies. He doesn’t look especially torn up about this fact. 

Kenny puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly. “Member berries. Not Cartman. We’ve wasted more than enough time talking about that insignificant piece of shit.” He walks over to a whiteboard and grabs a marker. At the top of the board he draws three columns, labeling them ‘stop production,’ ‘stop consumption,’ and ‘destroy berries.’ He turns around to face the room. “Ideas?”

“Have we tried going nuclear?” Craig suggests. “To destroy the berries.”

“It would probably destroy consumption and production, too,” Clyde adds helpfully.

“We’re not terrorists, but I appreciate your input, Craig,” Kenny says in a dull voice. “Gregory? Stan? Wendy?”

Craig and Clyde exchange a look like they realize that they’ve been brushed off, and Christophe lights another cigarette in his mouth. Gregory is staring at the table in front of him unseeingly as Wendy worries her bottom lip.

Stan looks up suddenly. “What about an antidote?” 

“Antidote,” Kenny repeats.

Wendy claps her hands together in front of her mouth. “Something that will bind to the active chemicals and prevent them from altering state of mind!” She throws her arms around Stan dramatically. “Stan, you’re a genius!”

Stan peeks over her shoulder at Kenny to make sure that there’s no bitterness on his part, but Kenny looks equally delighted. Stan should have guessed that he’d be too confident to feel jealous about his girlfriend and her elementary school ex. 

“We need to talk to Moses,” Kenny says once Wendy’s taken a step back, still breathless with excitement. “Figure out what the active chemical is.”

“I’ll get Jesus,” Wendy says, holding her hands up in prayer and whispering quickly under her breath.

“Jesus never responds to that,” Kenny says. “We need to call his cell.”

The two of them return to discussing this only between themselves. Stan looks over at Clyde and Craig, attempting to engage them in smalltalk about the last nine years of their lives. Clyde has a weird idea of what details someone might consider important, and Craig is supremely disinterested in speaking with Stan. It isn’t until Stan inquires after Token and Tweek that Clyde shuts up and Craig’s apathy morphs into anger.

“No, I haven’t seen them since they were drafted,” Craig snaps. “That tends to happen with the army, doesn’t it?”

“I thought you were in it with them,” Stan says faintly, remembering Craig’s picture in full uniform on the Wanted poster.

It is apparently the wrong thing to say. Craig’s face turns, if it’s possible, even colder, and he asks, “Talk to Kyle lately?” before moving to join Christophe, Damien, and Gregory.

Clyde opens his mouth to apologize on Craig’s behalf, but he stops when Stan doubles over to vomit on both of their sneakers. 

*

“‘Member when no one knew cigarettes caused cancer?” A berry chirps as Stephen Stotch pops it cheerfully into his mouth. He sits back with a content smile, swirling his glass of member berry wine while the berries chatter about how nice cigarettes are. Mr. Stotch is just one of many in the room who looks completely blissed out. In fact, there are only two holdouts. Across the room, Damien Thorn, holding an untouched glass of wine, sits stiffly as Stephen’s son, Butters, regales him with a play-by-play of his day with a mouth full of member berries. 

The other is Eric Cartman, who is embroiled in an intense discussion with Father Maxi about whether or not Iraq could be convinced to fight for the same team as Iran. The temperature extremes of the Iraqi climate make it infeasible to grow member berries, and they have remained firm that, although they offer their moral support for Palestine, they don’t fight alongside Iran, which surrendered its alliance when it was overcome with a Sunni majority.

He hates that he’s forced to know or care about any of this. Cartman could give less of a shit about Palestine. It has come to his attention in the past few years that Islam is even worse than Judaism, and he doesn’t understand how no one realizes besides him. Still, he has to humor Father Maxi, a reprehensible man who has substituted member berry wine for the blood of Christ in his church.

Father Maxi pauses his rant to lean forward and pull some member berries off the cheese plate on the coffee table. Cartman shakes his head when Maxi offers him a berry, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach that accompanies the sight or scent of most foods. Cartman’s kitchen in his lodging is stocked with nothing but ginger ale, whiskey, and a tupperware container of brownies that reek of weed. He can’t remember the last time that he hasn’t felt too nauseous to eat. Sometimes weed helps, but Cartman feels like his favorite activity has been taken away from him. 

But, of course, that happened nine years ago, when he lost his favorite punching bag. That was when everything started to taste like rotting cardboard, and that was when Cartman decided that one day he would become the most powerful man in any of the internment camps. He thinks he’s doing pretty well.

Father Maxi is distracted by Stephen and another guard, Terrance, who has been pushing the US Government to allow his father to use the Jews in genetic experiments. Cartman thinks it’s a pretty good idea - certainly better than just gassing all the cripples. They should turn them into many-assed freaks of nature then gas them. It’s a much more efficient use of materials.

He puts a hand over his glass to signal that Stephen ought not fill his glass and looks up just in time to notice Damien staring at him with a speculative look on his face. Damien catches his eye and pretends to take a delicate sip of member berry wine. Cartman doesn’t trust him at all. It can’t be a coincidence that Kenny seems to act with all the knowledge that Damien amasses, and, although no one else has made (or can make) the connection, Cartman knows that Kenny and Damien spent a significant amount of time together in Hell. More than that, Damien is the only other guard that Cartman has never seen touch a member berry. Cartman knows for a fact that this is suspicious because he does this too.

“Do you want something else?” Stephen asks, downing the last few drops straight from the bottle. “We’ve got beer, limoncello, whiskey?”

“Can I have some limoncello?” Butters calls eagerly, and Cartman resists the urge to laugh.

Instead, he smiles at Stephen and says, “Whiskey would be great.”

Stephen claps his hands and shouts, “Boy! Some limoncello and a whiskey!”

Cartman looks confused and asks, “Did you get a housekee- Oh.” His question is answered when a preteen boy, starved and hairless, scurries out of the kitchen with the bottles. Cartman sits back as he fills his glass with a trembling hand, daring to shoot Cartman one fearful look before averting his eyes to the ground and hurrying over to Butters.

He always thought it was bullshit when people say that eyes are the windows to the soul. For the most part, eyes just look like eyes. That does not hold true in the internment camps. Cartman has seen three distinct looks in the prisoners’ eyes, usually correlating with the length of their stay in the camp. Most of the new arrivals, like this boy, show palpable terror. There are, however, a small faction of new arrivals whose eyes burn with unbridled rage and hatred; some consider rage to be a powerful motivator, but in Cartman’s experience, most of these inmates die quickly after arrival. This is often because Cartman has them gassed. 

All surviving inmates sink into a dead-eyed apathy as they lose hope and check out from reality. There are no exceptions to this rule. He’s seen the look on thousands of faces, and he’ll see it on thousands more. He saw it in the green eyes of Sheila Broflovski during a visit to Colorado after her husband was lost to typhus. He can extrapolate.

“It’s a brilliant idea, really,” Stephen says, waving his glass at the young Jew as he disappears back in the kitchen. “They ought to be doing some good for us.”

Cartman nods like this is a revolutionary idea. “So you have a slave?”

“I prefer to think of him as a prisoner,” Stephen says.

Damien smiles and says, “A huge improvement, to be sure.”

Cartman is still nodding along as Stephen explains how useful it is to have a prisoner there to tend to every whim after a long day at the camps. He has a feeling that the boy is not just here to cook and clean; that seems like too happy a fate for an inmate, especially one who looks as traumatized as Stephen’s personal assistant.

Terrance takes a long swig and asks, “Can my father get one of those?”

“I don’t see why not,” Stephen says. “We’ve got plenty, don’t we?”

Cartman’s heart is hammering in his chest like it’s trying to escape when he asks, “Anyone can have one?”

“Well, you need to be on the right team,” Stephen says. “But I’m sure a man of your reputation could have ten, Eric.”

Cartman smiles. “I only need one.”

“Alright, but ten is better,” Stephen says, disappointed. “You just need to ask the administration, and I’m sure they can get you one by morning!”

Cartman looks to where the Jew has disappeared then back at his glass. He’s taking a huge risk when he announces to the only South Park guards stationed at Woodstock, “I want a specific one.”

Damien looks up sharply, but Butters, ironically forgetful considering his member berry consumption, doesn’t seem to understand the significance of the words. Cartman gives Damien a nasty smile, which is returned with a vengeance.

“They’re really all the same,” Stephen says. “Some are boys, and some are girls, but other than that.”

Cartman is officially certain that this boy is doing more than cleaning and cooking. 

“I can have ten, but I can’t make a special request?” Cartman asks angrily. “Do we not have the capabilities to find a Jew in a haystack or am I not important enough for the effort?”

Stephen blanches. “I’m sure they’ll honor your request, Eric.”

Cartman throws back the rest of the whiskey and smiles at Stephen. “Thank you, Steve. This was more than helpful.” He slams the chilled glass on the table without a coaster and stands up. “If you would excuse me.” 

As he’s walking away, he hears Damien say, “You might want to get your Jew to put a coaster under that,” and Cartman is glad that Damien can’t see him smirk at the sarcasm. At least, he thinks it’s a joke. It’s possible that he’s given Damien too much credit, and he’s just a sketchy guy by nature.

People tend to all react the same way when Cartman enters a room in the base. It’s not that he’s the cruelest guard. He’s simply the most creative, and he has perfected the ability to be constantly smiling, atrocity after atrocity. Butters is always smiling too, but it doesn’t scare anyone.

A reputation gets results. The bookkeeper is more than eager to fulfill his request, and she pulls up the database without question, fingers hovering over the keyboard as she awaits further instruction.

Cartman leans over her shoulder and says, “The name is Kyle Broflovski. That’s B-R-O-”

Her lip twitches, and she says, “You don’t work here for three years without learning how to spell Broflovski.” 

The database takes forever to load, and the names pop up one at a time. Cartman actually has to put in work to look neutral when the words “BROFLOVSKI, KYLE - DECEASED” appear on the screen. It’s quickly followed by another “BROFLOVSKI, KYLE - DECEASED,” and Cartman thinks he’s going to vomit. Finally, third on the list, is: “BROFLOVSKI, KYLE - ASBURY PARK.”

“He’s in New Jersey,” Cartman says blankly. 

“We’ll have him to you by morning, Mr. Cartman,” she says reverently. “I’ll have him on a train tonight.”

Cartman nods curtly and says, “Do.”

When he gets back to his room, he dry heaves on his knees in front of the toilet before he’s able to throw up bile. His throat stings like a bitch, and he exacerbates the pain with a shot of whiskey and hit from a bong. He rarely vomits; the nausea is a constant presence in his life that never seems to lead to anything worse. It’s just enough for him to be uncomfortable all the time.

Cartman is, to his surprise, able to sleep that night. He could barely sleep the night before his Sea Monkeys arrived, but vomiting takes all the energy out of him. He dreams about snakes coming out of his shower nozzle, then sprouting from his hair like Medusa. The snakes have just burst through his gums, forcing his teeth out of the way so they fall quietly to the ground, when he is awoken by a knock on the door.

It only takes a few seconds for the peace of a restful night to turn back into seasickness. He pulls on a pair of gray slacks and is still buttoning up his shirt as he strides quickly to the door. It might be projecting the wrong image not to answer the door in his uniform. He stops in front of the door, debating rushing back to his room to change clothes, before realizing that they could probably hear his footsteps approaching and halting.

Cartman opens the door to see a boy with gelled hair and full uniform standing there, an inmate a few feet behind him with his eyes glued on the floor. The guard salutes him enthusiastically, and Cartman returns the gesture before directing his focus to the prisoner.

He is completely bald, which shouldn’t be a surprise, but feels surprising. The top of his head barely reaches Cartman’s nose - still not surprising; complete lack of nutrition does that to a person. Cartman can see the shadows of his ribs and chest bones through the thin fabric of his smock. He is breathing heavily, wheezing even, and his eyes are full of the terror of a new arrival.

Most importantly, those eyes are brown, and this is not Kyle.

“You brought the wrong one,” Cartman snarls. “Can you not keep track of your fucking Jews in New Jersey?”

The guard prods at the Jew with the back of a rifle, and he winces, the wheezing growing louder. “You asked for Kyle Broflovski.”

Cartman looks at the Jew seriously. “Are you Kyle Broflovski?”

His eyes dart from Cartman to the guard, and he gasps out, “It’s my mother’s maiden name.”

Cartman scoffs and glares at the guard. “What the fuck is wrong with your fucked up camp that you categorize them by their mothers’ names?”

“I think it’s because Judaism is passed down through-” The guard begins, and Cartman gives him a stern look that shuts him up immediately. “I’m very sorry. We’ll leave him at Woodstock in case you want him later?”

“This isn’t Chinese takeout,” he spits. “Just get him out of my sight.”

The Jew - Kyle, Cartman supposes - looks like he might piss his pants when he whispers, “You know Kyle.”

“Amazing deduction. Tell me, why are we wasting your people’s brains on manual labor?” Cartman rolls his eyes and steps back over the threshold into his lodging. 

Kyle shakes his head quickly, looking like he wishes that he’d never spoken. “You know Kyle. I’ve met you before.” 

Cartman takes in the wheezing and irritatingly stereotypical accent and says, “Hope you don’t again,” before slamming the door on the two of them.

The words “BROFLOVSKI, KYLE - DECEASED” run through his head in a constant loop as he changes into his uniform. The bookkeeper calls to apologize for the misunderstanding, and Cartman is not forgiving of her mistake. She is practically begging for forgiveness when she says, “There’s another Kyle Broflovski in Telluride, Colorado. I’ll contact them to make sure that the name was entered properly, but he’s the only other living Kyle Broflovski in the system.”

“Have him here by tomorrow,” Cartman says.

“Of course, sir. You don’t think you might prefer someone from a more accessible camp? We don’t have a train from Colorado scheduled for another few days.” She sounds scared to be asking him to reconsider his request, and Cartman is pleased. She should be scared. He gets what he wants when he wants it - not a day later because of a blatantly incorrect naming system.

“Do you want me to list some other means of transport, or can you come up with them yourself?” Cartman asks.

“I can… come up with them myself,” she says hesitantly. “He’ll be here by tomorrow, of course.”

“I would not recommend fucking up again,” Cartman says before ending the call. 

He does not have a good day dealing with technicians who have come to repair gas chambers from which Kenny McCormick has stolen or destroyed numerous parts. The guards have only been aware of La Resistance for a year, since Jesus joined the cause, but Kenny has been on the scene for ages. Cartman’s been aware of his activity since Karen McCormick and her ‘cousin,’ Ike McCormick, were detained at the Canadian border and freed under mysterious circumstances. That was back when he still spray painted green question marks on the scene of the crime, before Kenny decided he needed to formalize the operation if he wanted people to think he’s the Second Coming.

Cartman is almost certain that’s how it happened. 

There won’t be any new shipments for a few weeks, which is a shame because Cartman’s favorite job is making fun of cripples (and, it goes without saying, sending them to an imminent death). Last time there was a dude with an actual baby foot - it was awesome. One of the more fun days since Cartman started, and most days are pretty fun besides the constant nausea and sense of impending doom.

Stephen invites him over for some more member berry wine that night, but Cartman decides to stay in and get high enough to eat. It’s a ritual that has to be upheld if he doesn’t want to end up looking like one of his prisoners. He misses his fat days; everyone seemed to think that losing weight was some kind of victory, but it feels like failure. 

He searches his pantry for any food that doesn’t require him leaving the house and ends up eating a soup of tuna salad and mayo, pretending it tastes like properly prepared tuna salad, when he’s interrupted by another knock on his door.

He doesn’t feel any trepidation as he goes to answer it, and he’s almost too stoned to be shocked by the beaming face of Randy Marsh, dressed in full uniform with a purple cross, the emblem of Telluride, stitched onto its chest. Cartman doesn’t realize that this is a strange visitor as he claps Randy’s hand in greeting like he’s a bro rather than Stan Marsh’s alcoholic and member berry-addicted father. 

“I didn’t realize it was you!” Randy says jovially. “How are you doing? Seen my son lately?”

“Why would I have seen St-?” Cartman asks before every bit of his attention is claimed by a sharp gasp behind Randy.

It’s exactly what he knew was true but couldn’t force himself to imagine. There - dead eyes, bald head, skeletal features - is the real Kyle Broflovski.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Cartman tries and fails to make a numb Kyle comfortable, and Kenny consults Moses for the active chemical in member berries.


	2. Comfortably Numb

When he first got to the camp, and maybe even for a few years after, he would dream about going home. Sometimes the war ended, and everyone was freed. Other times Stan, who had never let him down when he needed him, would rescue him. A lot of the time, though, none of this had ever happened. He would fall asleep on a mattress with straw sticking out where the plastic covering had torn, the stench of shit and sweat heavy in the air, and wake up a minute later in his bed at home. For five blissful hours a night, which could feel like weeks if he got lucky, he would eat breakfast at the kitchen table with his brother, ride the bus with Stan at his side and Kenny draped over the back of his seat so he could join in the conversation, and play HORSE in gym class. It was never an especially exciting day, and somehow that made him ache for it even more desperately.

Eventually, he woke up enough times that his brain could no longer trick him with the warmth of his memories. He’s not even sure that they happened. He might have grown up in the camp; he can’t remember. He thinks he’s known the comfort of a real life, but every time he falls asleep in his own bed, he wakes up back in the bunker. It might be easier if he didn’t have any of these memories, which he is now almost certain are fabricated. No one actually spends their childhood with a talking piece of holiday-themed poo or animate towel. These are delusions that only the most deliriously exhausted brain can create.

Now his dreams, when they occur, are disjointed and nonsensical. In one, a fat little boy blocks his path to safety from a sea of fire. The sky is falling down around them, and he demands something that’s in a bag around his neck. Desperate to escape, he complies, but when he touches the necklace, it burns his hand. The fabric of the bag turns to ash and falls away, revealing a sterling silver crucifix that burns its image into his chest and sets his insides on fire. The other boy laughs hysterically as the flames claim him, and Kyle wakes up.

“... staying in New York long?” He hears as if underwater. The speaker reminds him of the boy from his dreams, but he’s tall, just on the cusp of bony, and has pink, watery eyes. It can’t be the same person though, because that boy was ten, and this person is older than that. Kyle wonders if they’re the same age. 

The strange boy keeps shooting him fleeting glances, sometimes losing his place in the conversation in favor of staring at Kyle. Kyle forces himself to keep his eyes firmly on the boy’s feet. He’s afraid that, if he looks up, he will become the person from his dreams, and Kyle needs that boy to stay ten. He has to still be ten so Kyle can find him, and they can be ten years old together. 

“What are you going to do with him?” Randy Marsh asks. In Kyle’s imagination, he’s the father of his best friend. He doesn’t know how he came up with that because he doesn’t think a Marsh would ever interact with a Jew in any positive capacity. His son is thirteen. He’s been thirteen since Kyle arrived, but he can’t remember when that was. Sometimes Kyle worries that it’s been forty years and that it is actually Stan Marsh driving him to work faster with the butt of his rifle. Then he remembers that Stan Marsh probably isn’t real, like Mr. Hanky.

The skinny brunette shrugs and smiles. “I thought I’d make it up as I go along.”

“So is it true what they say happens to house Jews?” Randy asks. “I didn’t guess you were into that. If I’m being honest, I always worried about him and Stan, but he was always so focused on that Testaburger bitch.”

“She is a bitch,” the boy says absent-mindedly. Kyle can feel the heat of his curious stare boring into him, but he doesn’t have to look up until he’s told to. “Does he recognize me?”

“Kyle’s not all there anymore,” Randy says like he’s informing him of the weather. “I think he probably knows, though. It hard to tell what they’re making up to get sympathy.” Randy grabs Kyle’s shoulder and shakes him. “Say hello to your new owner, Kyle. This is why you’re out of the camp.”

Kyle looks up, the deja vu getting more intense as they meet eyes, and obediently says, “Hello. Sir.” He stops for a very long time and forces out, “Thank you.”

“Please,” the boy says, smiling, “call me ‘master.’”

“Master,” Kyle repeats, and the boy’s smile slips like he’s made a joke that Kyle didn’t understand.

He looks at Randy and says, “I need to get some sleep. Thank you for the delivery.”

Randy nods. “Anything to help! I’d been meaning to visit the bit apple anyway. Haven’t been here since Sharon was still blowing me on planes.”

“Big,” he says. “Woodstock is often not considered a part of New York City.”

Randy laughs and shakes his head. “Sure. You know any good member berry wine parlors around here?”

The boy scrunches his eyebrows together and asks, “Do you have wine parlors in your barracks?”

“Just Skeeter’s,” Randy answers cheerfully. “I’ll go find it myself. Enjoy your night!” He gives Kyle a small push forward before heading off into the night, possibly following his nose like a member berry-addicted dog.

After a certain amount of silence, it comes to Kyle’s attention that he should probably look up, but the other boy isn’t speaking either. He watches his feet step back and the door open wider, signalling for Kyle to come inside, and he drags his feet through over the doorstep. 

Inside, Kyle is hit by a tidal wave of heat. The sudden switch between extremes makes him feel sick, and his teeth start chattering harder like he’s coming up from a near brush with hypothermia. It isn’t a rare occurrence in the winter, like heat stroke isn’t a rare occurrence in the summer. It smells a bit like the time that Sparky was sprayed by a skunk, the heat only holding the smell in, but Kyle isn’t sure who Sparky is or why he’s thought of him.

“Sorry. Cold gets to you more without any body fat to insulate,” the boy says. Kyle looks up, very aware how life is without body fat, and he says, “Right. Do you want a blanket or something?” He looks like this one interaction has aged him about ten years, and he reaches for a weird glass bottle on the table that makes it smell even worse when lit. He looks down at it and back at Kyle like he thinks he might have made the wrong decision.

At Kyle’s lack of response, he sighs a little and goes to get a blanket. He’s gone for a long time, Kyle left standing in the entrance to the house, afraid to touch anything. When he comes back, his eyes are even redder than before, puffy and bloodshot. He holds it out, and Kyle stares at it blankly.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters, stepping forward to drape it around his shoulders. When he still doesn’t move, he picks Kyle’s hand up and molds it into a fist, holding the blanket around him like a cape. Kyle’s hand relaxes a little when he steps back, but he doesn’t let it drop. He just retreats back into it, burying his nose in the fabric on his shoulder. 

The other boy rubs his temples, hand slipping down to pinch the bridge of his nose in a way that seems oddly familiar, although inappropriate for this person. “You’re being totally excessive, Kyle. I know you can speak. Get the fuck over yourself.”

Kyle looks up abruptly, but any anger on his face melts away quickly, and he says, “Sorry.” He thinks hard and adds, “Master.”

“That was a joke, Kahl. Do you get jokes anymore or do I need to explain all of them?” 

The pronunciation of his name sends a shiver down his spine, and he says, “Sorry. Cartman.”

It’s like he’s said the magic word. Cartman’s eyes widen, and he steps forward a little before coming to his senses and saying, “Would you like something to eat? You’re probably hungry. What, um- what can you eat? Should you be on a BRAT diet or something?”

Kyle does not know how he’s supposed to comport in this situation. Cartman looks like he wants something from him that Kyle’s failing to deliver, and Kyle’s whole job here is to please and to serve. It feels like another person that he doesn’t know is speaking, and his brain hurts, every self preservation instinct warning him to stay silent, as he chokes out, “You only know what that is because you get diarrhea so often from eating crap.”

Cartman looks shocked and lets out a semi-hysterical, high-pitched laugh. He moves towards Kyle again, who cringes away, expecting to be beaten. Instead he’s pulled into a tight hug. He stands there stiffly, still clutching the blanket, while Cartman shakes, burying a weirdly wet face in the nook of his neck. He whispers, “I missed you so fucking much," and Kyle says, “Sorry.”

Cartman steps back and peers at Kyle like he's trying to see the light of lucidity return to his eyes. “Can you stop saying that?”

“Sor- Yes,” Kyle says, catching himself.

“I’ll get you food. Just - sit there, okay?” He orders, pointing to the stool by the small kitchen island, and Kyle obeys immediately. There’s a fruit bowl with one banana that looks brown and spotty. When Cartman opens his refrigerator, there’s nothing there except soda and brownies. Cartman looks indecisive for a moment then grabs the soda and turns to Kyle. Kyle holds a hand out to accept it because of course Cartman’s planning on starving him on a diet of complete shit, but Cartman doesn’t give him the can. He shakes his head and says, “I don’t think carbonation will be good for you,” before sticking it back in the refrigerator. 

He checks the ripeness of the banana, and Kyle holds out his hand once again. Cartman just glares at it like the food is angering him. “You don’t even like bananas. Don’t eat food you don’t like.”

Kyle retracts his hand again. He almost apologizes, but he stops himself just in time and averts his gaze back to the floor. There’s some walking around, the sound of the freezer door opening and something being pulled out. Kyle looks back up, watching Cartman work to detach some pieces of bread from a frozen loaf. There’s no toaster sitting on the countertop, although Cartman looks around like he expects to find one. He holds up a finger for Kyle to wait and pours too much olive oil in a nonstick pan before setting it over a high flame. The oil starts smoking almost immediately. Kyle jumps up to fix Cartman’s numerous mistake, but Cartman blocks his access. 

“Can you sit down? You’re not here to cook.”

“What am I here to do?” Kyle asks in a scratchy voice. His throat is suddenly very dry as he remembers Randy’s comment about ‘house Jews,’ and his eyes dart down to Cartman’s crotch, looking scared for the first time that night.

“Not that,” Cartman says firmly, knocking under his chin to move his eyes back up. “Jesus, Kyle. Is it so hard to believe I just didn’t want you in a camp?”

Kyle wants to tell him that, yes, that’s extremely hard to believe, but he settles for asking, “Is this a dream?”

Cartman dumps two pieces of bread into the pan with a loud sizzle and, without looking away from his culinary triumph, reaches out to pinch Kyle. 

Kyle watches his arm until the red mark has faded completely. He looks up and asks, “What happened to Ike?”

Cartman smiles, and Kyle expects to get pulled into one of his weirdly emotional hugs again, but Cartman just glances at him and says, “Canada. McCormick got him up there a little after they took, um, Sheila and Gerald. And you. They took you, too.”

An emotion that Kyle can’t name stabs at his heart, and he asks, “Ike isn’t in a camp?”

Cartman shakes his head. “Free as a bird and probably fucking McCormick’s little sister.”

“Kenny’s real,” Kyle breathes. “Do you know Stan?”

He flips the bread before looking back at Kyle. “Are you asking if I know where Stan is or if I’ve met Stan? Either way, he’s in Canada, and yes, Stan is real, too.”

“Stan didn’t…”

“Get you out?” Cartman looks like he has a lot of thoughts on this matter, but he just says, “An internment camp is a lot more serious than David Blaine’s cult, Kyle. Sharon moved him and Shelley away right afterwards.”

“He doesn’t work at a camp,” Kyle says.

“No, that’s just his idiot father.”

“You work at a camp.”

Cartman pulls the bread out of the pan and promptly drops them on the counter. “Did you expect any differently?”

Kyle shakes his head, and Cartman occupies himself with searching through a cabinet for anything more substantial than bread. Kyle doesn’t touch the toast, and Cartman snaps, “Eat.”

“What about my parents?”

Cartman grabs a container of Mott’s applesauce and sets it on the counter. “You should eat. Do you need weed? It’ll help.”

“Is that the thing that Kenny’s brother always did?” Kyle asks. “No, I… Where are my parents?”

“Sheila was still at Nederland in 2023,” Cartman says in a tight voice.

Kyle nods. “How did my dad die?”

Cartman grabs a spoon and pushes the applesauce into Kyle’s hands. “Typhus.”

Kyle sets the applesauce down, and Cartman warns, “I’m going to kick your ass if you don’t eat.”

“You’re not fat anymore,” Kyle states.

Cartman reaches out to brush a thumb over the outline of Kyle’s ribs. “Not your size. Eat. Do you want a hat? I’ll get you a hat. How quickly does your hair grow?” He looks very flustered and doesn’t wait for an answer before rushing out of the room. “Eat the food,” he shouts from another room, and Kyle forces a bite of toast down before deciding on the applesauce. 

He returns to the room and thrusts a blue and yellow hat into Kyle’s hands. “I’ll buy you a new one when I get groceries. Do you want green? I’ll get green. Or, maybe - do you like being bald? I can get you, like, dome wax. Is that what black guys use?”

He’s babbling now, and Kyle fiddles around with the yellow poof on the top of the hat thoughtlessly before he slips it on. “I don’t know how fast it grows,” he says. Cartman looks strangely heartbroken over this revelation, and Kyle forces down a spoonful of applesauce. He sets it down again and pushes it away from himself. “I can’t, um…”

“I’ll get you some of those shakes they give anorexic chicks,” Cartman assures him. Kyle’s eyebrows crease together, and Cartman says, “Liane tried to buy them for me last time she visited.” He smiles a little. “She made me pancakes to keep in the freezer.” Kyle doesn’t laugh or show any reaction to the idea, and Cartman’s face falls again. “They were actually pretty good anyway,” he mumbles. 

Cartman reaches for the glass weed bottle with noticeably shaking hands and coughs harshly after sucking it in like a drowning man gasping for air. He slams it down on the counter with such force that Kyle expects it to shatter as he braces himself and tries to catch his breath. “Do you want to watch TV or something?” He gasps out. “I have hot water; you could take a shower or something…” 

He trails off, looking horrified with himself when Kyle looks up, a strange expression of resignation stretching across his face. “Not that kind of- Do you want to take a bath? You can, um, I’m not going to-.” Cartman stops and swears viciously, hand wrapping around the base of his smoking contraption again. “I can sit in there or something, Kyle. I promise that there’s not-.”

“I didn’t think you’d turn your bathroom into a gas chamber,” Kyle says in a monotone, and Cartman looks gutted. Kyle stands up and says, “I’ll shower,” more to be alone than to put Cartman out of his obvious misery.

Cartman nods manically, leaving Kyle in the living room-kitchen-dining room as he rushes off through a door. Kyle waits until he can hear the pounding of running water. He looks around the room once like he’s preparing to say goodbye to it forever and follows Cartman into the bathroom.

“So was that a ‘no’ on me staying in here?” Cartman asks, still clearly struggling to wrap his mind around the idea of emotional support. He has a hand in the shower to test the water, and he steps back, shaking it out to dry it. 

“Do you think I could stop you if you decided to kill me?” Kyle asks.

“Probably not,” Cartman says. “No. You couldn’t. I’ll be in the living room?” 

He looks very troubled as he pushes past Kyle to leave the bathroom. Kyle can feel everything slipping back into a dream-like trance as he pulls the smock over his head and steps under the water that might be closer to lukewarm but feels scorching on his skin.

There are actual bath products on the cramped shower shelf, and Kyle feels a shocked, shrill laugh tear out of him when the bar of soap, which is more of a conglomeration of the remains of multiple bars, slips onto the shower floor. It’s not like a dam has broken, but his body starts convulsing, and Kyle struggles to turn up the heat with trembling hands.

He didn’t remember hearing the door open, but the smock is gone when he steps out of the shower, replaced with a large t-shirt that hangs down to the middle of his thighs like a dress and a pair of boxers with a rubber band sitting on top. Kyle doesn’t understand the purpose of the rubber band until he tries them on and is forced to look around the bathroom for a way to tie them so they won’t slip down. 

The room smells much worse than it did before when Kyle steps out, and he finds Cartman parked in front of the television with a glass of whiskey clutched in a white-knuckled hand. The half-finished bottle and another glass rest on the coffee table on which he’s propped up his feet. He jumps about a foot in the air when he hears the bathroom door close and waits anxiously for Kyle to approach the couch.

“I forgot about a bed,” Cartman says, returning to dithering immediately. “You can have the couch, and I’ll get some sheets? Do you want my room? You sleep there. I like falling asleep with the television on anyway. It’ll be perfect.” Cartman turns white and says, “There’s a poster of - Fuck, I’ll be right back.” 

He tears off to his room, and Kyle hears the sound of ripping paper, wondering vaguely what image of Hitler Cartman loves enough to keep on his walls.  _ The Simpsons _ , he realizes, is still running, halfway into its thirty-seventh season. He’s pretty sure that it isn’t remotely funny, but he wouldn’t have enjoyed it even if it were. 

Cartman exits his room with a ball of crumpled paper, and he makes a beeline for the trash before returning to the television. He doesn’t sit on the couch, just rests his elbows on the back of the couch and stands behind him. 

“It’s not very good,” Cartman says after they watch for a few minutes. “I mean, Sideshow Bob is still great, but he’s usually only in Treehouse of Horror episodes at this point. TV is mostly news anyway; too many artists got political and were forced to…” Cartman pinches the edges of his eyebrows with thumb and forefinger and shakes his head a little.

“Is Sideshow Bob your favorite character?” Kyle asks after Cartman’s wallowed in self-loathing for a little while.

Cartman nods, and Kyle feels like it’s oddly fitting when he says, “I liked Bart.”

It’s surreal watching Lisa still playing the saxophone and Homer talking about donuts; some things, he supposes, don’t like to break routines. Eventually Cartman joins him on the couch, and he gestures towards the bottle. “Do you want any?”

Kyle reaches out to trace the glass with a finger. He tilts the bottle to one side, watching the amber liquid splashing against the sides, and sits back in his seat. “No,” he decides. The threat that he never stops if he starts seems more real than anything else has that day. “You don’t have any member berries.”

“I don’t touch that shit,” Cartman says in a gruff voice. “Fucks people up.”

Kyle nods a little. “Can I go to bed?”

Cartman’s on his feet almost immediately. “Yeah. Of course. Yeah. You don’t need to ask for- Do you want a sleeping pill? I don’t know how much to- How much do you weigh? I must be double you, and I take them all the- I’ll buy food tomorrow.”

Kyle reaches up to rub his protruding chest bones and says, “I’m just going to sleep.”

“Do you want me to tuck you in?” Cartman blurts out and turns red as soon as he says it. 

Kyle shakes his head. He points questioningly to the door he saw Cartman go through, and Cartman nods quickly. Kyle stands there for a bit before he says, “Good night,” and hurries through the door to Cartman’s room. 

There’s a dark spot on the wall where the poster has protected it from sun damage. Kyle walks around the room, feeling dazed again. He wanted to be alone, but he’s not prepared to go to sleep and wake up back on his bunk in Telluride. 

He stands in front of Cartman’s bookshelf, absorbing every inch of it. A single book has been flipped to the spine is facing away from him, and Kyle pulls it out, not feeling the least bit surprised when he sees  _ Mein Kampf.  _ He puts it back in in the correct direction as a sign of his presence in the room.

On the shelf below, Cartman’s arranged miscellaneous knick knacks. Clyde Frog is there, looking at the bed with black beady eyes. He looks very worn, and someone has mended him poorly with red string. Next to it is a framed photo of Cartman, Butters and Stan, clearly folded very carefully on both sides; the creases look very worn like Cartman’s been opening and closing this photo very frequently since it was taken. 

Stan is on one end, looking off to his right and laughing at something that Kyle can’t see, and Cartman is on the other end, his arm cut off from the photo. Kyle pulls it out of the frame and unfolds one end, wondering why Cartman wouldn’t just cut it when he unfolds the right side to see Cartman’s arm around Kenny, still in the orange parka that fits incrementally better than it did as a child. He unfolds the other side. There, age thirteen and probably thirty pounds heavier than he is now, a much younger Kyle is looking back at Stan while they share a private joke. 

Kyle doesn’t know how long he stares at Stan and himself, wishing he could remember what they were laughing about while the other three boys stare at the camera. Stan has Randy’s hair, but they otherwise look nothing alike, and it’s the biggest relief that Kyle’s felt in a long time. He whispers, “dude,” and folds the photo again to put it back in its frame.

Next to Cartman’s bedside is a small table with only an alarm clock and an issue of Time Magazine. Kyle picks it up, mouth opening slightly at the sight of Kenny and Wendy on the cover. He still can’t wrap his head around the idea that his friends would be living like ordinary teenagers, attending prom and dating girls. Stan was still dating Wendy when Kyle was taken away. He reads the whole article, sitting cross-legged on top of Cartman’s blankets. His heart feels very tight as he pours over the passage speculating about Kenny helping people escape to Canada when he was still only in high school. There’s a photo of Kenny and Karen next to the paragraph, and Kyle actually smiles at the kind smile on Karen’s face, hoping desperately that Ike is with her like Cartman suspects.

He reads it twice until his brain is too exhausted from years without sleep or food to decipher words anymore. Kyle falls asleep on top of the blankets, clutching the magazine to his chest like a teddy bear. His head jerks up a few times as he hears the sounds and smells the smells of the barracks, but the room is still Cartman’s every time he opens his eyes.

*

Clyde unfurls a canvas with a flourish, and Kenny and Wendy’s heads tilt to the side in tandem as they examine the new symbol of La Resistance. Wendy makes a hesitant little grunting noise, and Kenny’s lip twitches, shooting her a knowing look.

“See?” Clyde asks. “It’s a pentagram, but we added a purple triangle, so now it’s a Jewish Star.”

Wendy brings her index finger to her lips. “Maybe start with changing the color of the triangle,” she offers in a pained voice like she can’t decide whether to laugh or yell at Clyde.

“Star of David,” Kenny corrects.

Craig sniffs. “I knew they wouldn’t appreciate our work.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t made it actively offensive,” Wendy says angrily. She seems to have decided that this is an occasion to yell. “Have you even tried to educate yourself, Clyde? Ignorance is not an excuse. You are a direct reflection of La Resistance, and you churn out this shit!” 

Kenny puts a hand on her shoulder as he feels Wendy ramping up for inevitable screaming. “Okay, Clyde, I think we’re going to stick with a red fist for now,” Kenny says. “Simple, classic, doesn’t contain any emblems of concentration camps…”

Clyde looks down at his artwork. “They put pentagrams on concentration camps?”

“I fucking can’t,” Wendy says, throwing her hands up in the air. Kenny tightens his grip, and she pushes him off. “Clyde has been with us for two years now, Kenny! He’s a fucking idiot, and if he does something like this publicly, everyone will think that we’re all like this!”

“Right here,” Clyde says in a hurt voice. “I didn’t know.”

Tensions are running high in the base. Christophe’s cigarette smoke has become suffocating, no one appears to trust Stan besides Kenny and Wendy, Gregory is putting a wrench in all their ideas, and Moses has been completely useless. Not only can he not tell them what the active chemical is, he also has been no help in telling them how to analyze drugs. His best suggestion so far has been: “Um, you could, um, boil it and examine the phase changes.” Wendy later told Kenny as they juiced member berries for sampling that this would not be an especially effective method of analyzing multiple compounds together.

Kenny and Wendy have never had especially romantic pillow talk. He loves her more than anything, but they have both thrown themselves body and soul into La Resistance. They usually talk about the war or the next action for La Resistance. Sometimes Wendy cries, whether from sadness or anger, and Kenny holds her until they both fall asleep.

Last night, the topic was member berries. No matter how tough life gets, Wendy’s always wholly present during the act of lovemaking itself. Kenny can tell how overactive her brain is by how quickly she can switch from being his girlfriend back to being a revolutionary. As soon as he rolled off her, still panting and feeling kind of like the most awesome person in the world (a common side effect of realizing Kenny has actually earned Wendy Testaburger’s love), Wendy asked, “How can the member berries be juiced and still survive?”

Kenny thought for a second and said carefully, “When stomach acids degrade them, are they dying?”

They got no sleep, juicing member berries and making plans for how to recreate the environment of the human stomach all night long. Wendy held a long video conference with Moses to discuss the components of stomach acid, and Kenny poked at the skins of the juiced berries like he could coerce them into speaking. 

Wendy forced him to take a break when Kenny started shouting at the skins, “‘Member when no one used contraceptives? ‘Member Pearl Harbour?”, waking up the rest of La Resistance in the process.

“I don’t think you can bait them into speaking,” Stan said groggily, looking over him at the skins. He flipped one over to examine the deflated mouth. “I don’t get it. Is it dead?”

“Search me,” Kenny said, frustrated. “God, why can’t this shit give up and die for good?”

He’s been awake for over twenty-four hours when he hears the trapdoor being opened, the telltale sign of Damien’s arrival from the camp. Kenny may not love the way that Damien behaves himself, but he has a huge amount of respect for the boy. No one else would be able to mask their disgust long enough to survive a day in the camp, and he has taken by far the most dangerous job onto his own shoulders without a single complaint. At least, he hasn’t complained about being asked to put himself in danger. He has complained many times about how long the bus ride is from Woodstock to the city. 

Damien looks at the banner for a second and says, “Good shit. I like everything about this.”

Wendy gives Clyde a look like this should tell him something about his design, and Clyde averts his eyes shamefully. “C’mon, Craig,” he mutters, and Craig shoots Wendy a dirty look that is returned viciously.

Damien picks up a beaker of member berry juice and swirls it around, giving it a sniff before setting it back down. “So no luck?”

“I don’t understand how something can be eaten and still not be dead,” Kenny says in a tired voice. “I mean, I do, but that can’t be the solution.”

“Maybe it’s time to consider demonic cults,” Damien says with a shrug. “It’s not any crazier than most of our ideas.”

Wendy looks confused and asks, “What?”

Kenny’s head snaps up to gape at Damien, and Damien smiles a little as he says, “That is not dead which can eternal lie.”

Kenny opens and closes his mouth as the words echo through his head. Wendy is asking Damien a million questions although she’ll never be able to understand the answers, and Damien crosses over to their board of ideas. Under the column  Destroy Berries , which has a multitude of scratched out ideas and a hastily scrawled “stomach acid,” he writes, “immortality.”

“That’s absolute nonsense,” Wendy says pragmatically.

Stan wanders out of Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al’s room, where he has been allowed to sleep until they return from their trip, and surveys the new addition to the board. “It seems like immortality would help them be more immortal.”

Kenny is wringing his hands nervously as he declares, “Damien, I need to talk to your dad.”

Damien smiles again. “I’m sure you’ll be seeing him very soon.”

“Why is that?” Wendy asks, reaching for Kenny’s arm protectively like Damien has issued some kind of threat.

Damien’s eyes flicker to Stan, and he says, “I think there’s something you want in Woodstock.”

Thoughts are flying through Kenny’s head at a mile a minute, and he tries to remind himself to stay grounded in the conversation at hand. It feels like they’ve had a flood of ideas in the past day that are all proven wrong as quickly as they come, and Kenny can barely keep up anymore. It’s disorganized and sloppy and not how an organization should be run. “What?”

“If I understand human nature at all,” Damien begins, “which, I assure you, I most certainly do, your dear friend has left Telluride.”

Wendy gasps, and Kenny and Stan exchange a horrified look. 

“Woodstock is a death camp,” Wendy says in a hushed voice. 

Kenny has already grabbed his jacket and is looking around for Christophe’s gun when Damien says, “He’s not going to the camp. He’s going to the guards’ barracks.”

“Give me your gun,” Kenny demands, striding back to Damien with hand outstretched. 

Stan shakes his head, letting out a sound like a small animal dying. “What’s going on?”

“Eric Cartman has, if I’m not mistaken, requested to have him brought to his quarters. But, again, this is just speculation. Very well-reasoned speculation.”

“Cartman,” Stan repeats like he’s never heard this name before. “Cartman has…”

Kenny reaches towards Damien’s belt, and Damien steps back. “Do you know what happens if you’re caught with a gun that they know belongs to me? There’s a serial number on it.”

“Christophe,” Kenny bellows.

Wendy reaches out to Kenny. “This seems like a trap, Kenny. They’re clearly baiting you with the one person that they know you’ll be stupid over!”

“Well, it’s fucking working,” Kenny shouts, spreading his arms out wide. “Where the fuck is Christophe?”

“There will be less than an hour of darkness once you get there!” Wendy begs.

Christophe slinks out of his and Gregory’s room, eyeing Kenny reproachfully. “Maybe a knock next time?” He suggests and holds out a gun by the barrel. “I assume this is why you’ve woken us up.”

Kenny grabs it eagerly, giving Wendy a kiss on the cheek as he tucks it into his belt. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises. “Damien, let’s go.”

Stan stands up as Kenny passes and says, “I want to go, too.”

Christophe snorts. “Only Kenny enters the camps.”

“It’s Kyle,” Stan says in a broken voice. “Please let me come.”

Kenny looks him over dispassionately and says, “No,” before pulling Damien out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Kenny breaks into the guards' barracks, and Kyle loses his grip on reality.


	3. Vera

This really shouldn’t be so easy. Kenny sort of hates how easy it is, how many possibilities it leaves open for the missions which he has so far failed. Damien leaves him outside the camp with a nod towards the twenty foot chainlink fence, and Kenny slides the sleeve of his shirt down over his hands as he scales it. He mutters various curses as he swings his leg over to the other side, dropping down the final ten feet.

La Resistance has had a detailed map of the camp for two years, since Kenny couldn’t think of anything more useful to do with his time than scouting missions. They were useful, and he shouldn’t remember that period so sullenly, but he had expected to be helping people left and right. Wendy explained that Kenny was imagining a band of superheroes rather than a political organization, but someone has to be the hero. Kenny’s philosophy has always been to do the things that need to be done.

He wants to pull his hood down far over his face, but that’s begging to attract attention. It feels foolhardy to be out in the open in a wig and Damien’s spare uniform; if any of these guys give a shit about their jobs, they should be able to recognize Kenny’s face.

They probably don’t though, and Kenny’s able to convince himself that most of the guards are binging on member berries or passed out after binging on member berries. 

The barracks are surprisingly quaint. ‘Barracks’ doesn’t really do justice to what, honestly, looks a bit like a normal neighborhood, and he wonders how many people got forced out of their homes in the name of eminent domain. 

He reaches Cartman’s house without a problem in his navigation and wastes a fair amount of time searching for the scratch mark on the back wall that marks his abode. Kenny finds it, makes sure his safety isn’t on, and splays his fingers on the pane in an attempt to push up the window. He isn’t especially surprised that it doesn’t work, but he’s never tried to break into a house before, and he should have foreseen this being an issue.

He hovers in front of a window for a few seconds, twisting and flexing his wrist as he debates the merits of just punching his way in and being done with it. There’s the small issue of the sound of glass shattering ringing through the air, and the bigger issue of Kenny having absolutely no other ideas besides simply going in through the front. He wishes Wendy or Christophe were here, Wendy because Kenny believes she’ll always know what to do and Christophe because Kenny knows that he knows what to do. 

The front of the house makes him more nervous, standing openly on the gravel path between dwellings while he searches for a card or pin or, very unlikely, the long-picking kit which he was frankly stupid to leave at home. He finds a pin and guard’s now-deactivated ID card and spends a minute attempting to wiggle the door open without making a noise.

He breathes out a long sigh of relief when it opens without a squeak and shuts the door carefully behind him, gripping the doorknob behind his back for a few seconds as his eyes adjust to the darkness. 

He walks softly past the kitchen and into the living room, where there is a figure sleeping on the couch. Kenny’s breath catches in his throat, but his shoulders slump in disappointment when he sees Cartman. That asshole was probably guarding the door and fell asleep, which makes Kenny think that this really was some poorly-planned trap to ruin his poorly-planned rescue mission. 

Kenny’s not sure how long he stands there, debating whether to kill Cartman now or later. He probably won’t be fast enough to kill him before he screams, and Kenny can’t risk Kyle being kept in the camp, but at least Kenny would come away from this encounter knowing that he made life better for thousands of people. He reaches a hand out for a pillow and stops himself, backing away from Cartman before that horrible face convinces him that action is necessary.

That leaves the possibility of three doors, and Kenny winces as he first opens the door of a closet. He’s wasting far too much time. He knows that he should figure out where Kyle is kept and come back another night with a more definite plan; he can hear Wendy’s voice in his head ordering him to get out of the house immediately, if not for his sake than for Kyle’s. Kenny swallows mutely and reaches for the second doorknob, and an arm wraps around his arms and chest while another hand clamps over his mouth. 

Kenny kicks backwards, but the assailant doesn’t loosen his grip, and they both go stumbling back, an end table being knocked over in the process. He’s pulling Kenny towards the door roughly, and Kenny keeps struggling until the hand on his mouth is removed for the door to be flung open and Kenny pushed outside.

“So how are you doing, man?” Cartman asks conversationally as he shuts the door behind him. “Been a minute, huh?”

Kenny clenches and unclenches his fists. “Don’t play cute, Cartman.”

“I am cute,” Cartman tells him seriously. “I just think we should take a second to appreciate this touching reunion.”

“Yeah, you’ve been having a lot of reunions lately, haven’t you?” Kenny spits, and Cartman smiles calmly.

“Do a better job of pretending Damien’s not a spy,” he advises him. 

Kenny sets his jaw. “I didn’t come to talk.”

“No, no,” Cartman says thoughtfully. “You just came to get Kyle killed because your ego can’t take not being a superhero. I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Kenny.”

“I’m going to get Kyle killed?” Kenny whispers angrily. “Not the one of us who’s literally a professional killer?”

Cartman gives him another placid smile, and Kenny’s hand inches towards his gun. “I may be a professional killer, Kenny, but at least I’ve actually been intending to kill people whenever it happens. Tell me, how many people died during your stupid rescue mission last time? Forty?”

The answer is twenty seven, but Kenny’s not going to say that. 

“Cartman,” Kenny says. “I know you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t have at least some respect for your childhood. You know what you’re doing is-”

“Oh, please, the only person who can give a convincing speech is in there,” Cartman says, jerking his head towards the door. “And you aren’t listening to me. If Kyle leaves with you, he will die. I’m preventing that inevitability. Honestly, I’m not sure why you aren’t thanking me right now.”

Kenny pulls out the gun, and Cartman puts his hands up innocently. “That’s not fair. Death doesn’t mean the same thing to the two of us.”

“Yeah, tell me about fairness,” Kenny growls. 

Cartman’s eyes narrow. “You really don’t want to kill me.”

“I’m pretty sure I do,” Kenny says.

Cartman sneers at him. “This is the leader of La Resistance? I assumed you’d grown up and gotten rational. I’m clearly not about to kill Kyle, and I don’t really think I could make life much worse for him than it already is. So, you see: he’s in no worse a position than he was before, probably better if you’d listen to reason, and you have such a stellar reputation of getting people out of camps in one piece. I’m the one who got Kyle out of danger. Why would I risk that now?”

“I know you can do worse, Cartman,” Kenny says, his grip loosening. 

Cartman smirks. “And that’s because you have no idea what’s going on here. If I thought he’d be safe with you, I’d let him escape.”

“He will be safe with me!”

Cartman looks unconvinced. “Everyone else may be stumped, but I know how you manage to get safely in and out of a camp, and it’s because you can only manage to get safely in.”

“You shouldn’t know about that,” Kenny says. “I knew you were some kind of monster.”

“Look, my idea worked. Yours didn’t. Why does Kyle have to suffer because of your ego?”

“You don’t know shit about his suffering.”

“No, actually,” Cartman says, looking mildly amused. “I know much, much more about his suffering. I’m keeping him here, Kenny, so now you have the option of either leaving or me killing you.”

Kenny drops his arm compliantly. “Let me see him.”

Cartman makes a face. “Hell no. He already thinks everything isn’t real, and you want to make today even more surreal?”

Kenny’s shoulders slump, trapped. “What’s he like?”

Cartman raises an eyebrow. “Like a thirteen-year-old fetus kept in brine with major PTSD - what did you fucking think?”

“He’ll get better,” Kenny says hopelessly, and Cartman scoffs.

“Do you have any idea how many people have survived the entire nine years? Remember his bitch mom? There’s like a 5% chance she’s still alive. Kyle was there the whole nine years, Kenny.” Cartman smiles darkly and says, “There’s no fucking chance he gets better.”

“Then why bring him here?” Kenny asks, his tone practically begging Cartman to let him bring Kyle with him. “What is your fucking plan?”

“My plan has already been executed, Kenny. Quite well, too. It’s now in the plan archives, and everything I do from this point on is very, very low stakes.” Cartman looks extraordinarily pleased with himself when he tells Kenny, “You should try winning sometime.”

“I am going to win, Cartman! My side is going to win!” Kenny weighs the pros and cons of his actions before trying to dart past Cartman again, catching him off guard. It doesn’t work, and Kenny barely realizes it’s happening until his back is slammed into the door, and a hand wraps around his neck.

“And you know what happens if you win?” Cartman asks, his mouth so close to Kenny’s ear that shivers run down his spine. “We evacuate the guards, probably, and bomb every fucking camp as soon as it looks like the US is going to lose. They’ll rename Pyrrhic victories, Kenny. They’ll be Kenny victories from then on.”

Kenny kicks out viciously, and Cartman tightens his grip. “Cartman, you absolute sack of shit,” he gasps out, still kicking. 

“It’s just good politics. Germany’s the strongest country in the world now.”

“Germany is fighting against you!” Kenny gasps furiously. “Germany is strong because it learned its lessons from the Holocaust, not because of the Holocaust, you fucking Nazi!”

“Woah,” Cartman says, loosening his grip. “We don’t use the n-word here.”

Kenny takes the opportunity to push him off. “The n-word? Are you fucking kidding me, Cartman?”

Cartman shrugs and shakes his head a little. “Don’t call me a fucking socialist.”

“Jesus Christ, could you be a worse person?” Kenny asks, a little hysterical from failing mere feet from Kyle and, on top of that, being beaten by an elementary school pest.

Cartman nods. “I really, really could. So now I’m going to let you leave. Your Jew will be safe, and I won’t even tell anyone about Damien.” He pauses and looks into Kenny’s glare of pure loathing. “You can thank me if you want.”

“Why the hell would I thank you, Cartman? All you’ve done is switch the shape of his prison! Kyle needs to be with someone with actual emotions!”

“No, actually, he doesn’t,” Cartman says loudly, and Kenny wants to warn him to keep his voice down but realizes that Cartman’s in no danger if they’re caught. “Stop trying to act like you understand shit, Kenny. You’ve been off playing Freedom Pals with Stan Marsh’s bitch while Kyle’s been in a camp for nine fucking years.”

Cartman’s voice is getting steadily louder, and Kenny is very sure that he’s about to die at the hands of some more neo-Nazis as Cartman pushes on. “I’m pretty sure he spent a lot of that time thinking you or Stan were going to save him, and, fuck, I fucking did too! You guys were supposed to save Kyle, you fucking douchebags, but Stan bailed, and you left Colorado, and I can’t fucking believe he wasn’t a little bit of a priority to either of you. And now you want to take credit because I stepped up and did what had to be done, and yeah, I wish I had done it nine years ago, but I didn’t because it was your fucking job!”

He pushes against Kenny’s windpipe once more with the side of his hand and steps back. “I can’t believe your hero complex. Really, it’s astounding. I don’t think you could be more full of yourself if you were wearing a red poofball hat.”

Kenny rubs his throat, eyeing Cartman reproachfully, and says, “Stan would have been here if I’d let him.”

Cartman gives an over-the-top eye roll. “You thought Stan would bring too much respect for mortal life?”

“I would not have let Kyle die,” Kenny says, and Cartman throws his arms out angrily. 

“Of course you wouldn’t have! You’d just have him back in the fucking camps ‘cause guess what? If my elementary school friend gets caught saving my other elementary school friend, who happens to be a Jew that I specially requested from Colorado, I don’t get him back in the end, Kenny! I probably fucking die, and we will be lucky if he does, too!”

Cartman is breathing heavily from rage and exertion when he finishes, and he doesn’t even wait for Kenny to respond before pressing a button on a little device that’s been clipped to the waistband of his pants. Alarms and flashing lights immediately shatter the night’s peacefulness, and Cartman gives Kenny a challenging smirk.

“Oh, God dammit, Cartman!” Kenny swears. “I will be back for him!”

“I know you will,” Cartman tells him, and he doesn’t make any move to stop Kenny when he lunges for his gun. Kenny gives Cartman one last disgusted glare, and Cartman waves before Kenny aims the gun awkwardly and shoots himself in the chest.

*

Cartman washes his hands immediately after entering the house, checking himself over for any blood splatters on his clothing before reaching for the bong with a shaking hand. He doesn’t even have the energy to take a hit from it; he just collapses into the kitchen stool and lets his forehead fall to the countertop.

He hates Kenny McCormick. He hates La Resistance, but at least he respects some of them, like Damien and Wendy and Jesus, to a certain extent. Something about Jesus has saved him from two holocausts in a hundred years, so Cartman thinks he's probably a good dude. Kenny just wasted a night of his own valuable time to save someone who Cartman had already saved, and Cartman is absolutely livid that Kenny is willing to sneak into a camp to break Kyle out only after his life has gotten incrementally better, exponentially easier to save him from.

He breathes deeply before taking a long hit from the bong. He repeats the action a few time, resting his head in his hand in between hits while his body shakes with suppressed coughs. 

Eventually, he feels like he’s able to do what he has to do - after all, it’s not like Kyle is all there, either. Not bringing his A game. Cartman’s just reducing the differences between them. 

Before he leaves for Kyle’s room- Cartman’s room, there’s a knock on his door, and Cartman half-heartedly waves at the air in a way that could never possibly remove the stench of weed before opening it.

Damien is in full uniform when Cartman opens the door, and his nose wrinkles immediately as the smell hits him. “Do I call at a bad time?” He asks, speaking like gothic little alien as much as always.

Cartman hunches his shoulders and says, “It calms me down.”

“You must be quite calm,” Damien says, inclining his head slightly. “I was sent to ask you about the dead body of Kenny McCormick that was found about five feet to my left,” he reports, jerking his head to the left. “We think it’s likely that he was attempting to enter your house.”

They eye each other for a long time, each daring the other to drop the charade, until Cartman asks, with a sickeningly sweet smile on his face, “What questions do you have?”

“I would love to be invited in for a glass of member berry wine,” Damien answers with a charming smile. Cartman’s smile freezes unpleasantly on his face, and he steps back to allow Damien entrance.

Damien walks in slowly, surveying the house and smirking a little at the sight of the bong on the table. “You are comfortable,” he announces, standing in the middle of the room. “Can I see your Jew?”

“Why do you want to do that,” Cartman asks skeptically.

Damien turns around to look at him seriously. “You would do best not to seem possessive, Eric. Bring out Kyle, and learn how to hide your feelings a little better.”

Cartman glares at him for a second but is left with no better alternative than mumbling ‘La Resistance douchebag’ as he walks over to the door to his room.

As he suspected, the alarm did wake Kyle up, who is now sitting with his back against the headboard and knees against his chest. Cartman nods at him and says, “C’mon. You’re summoned.”

Kyle gets up immediately, wrapping his arms around himself as he follows Cartman out to the living room. Damien is helping himself to a glass of whiskey, and he lifts the glass as a toast to Kyle. 

“Kyle Broflovski,” Damien says warmly. “You have changed, haven’t you?”

Kyle opens his mouth, shooting Cartman a panicked glance before he nods his head.

Damien sets the glass down. “Say your answers aloud,” he commands loudly, and Kyle says, “Yes.”

“Good,” Damien praises. “Do you know who I am?”

Kyle shakes his head, and Damien raises an eyebrow so that Kyle quickly says, “No.”

“I am Damien Thorn,” he says clearly. “We attended third and fourth grade together.” Kyle doesn’t say anything, and Damien snaps, “Speak.”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Cartman says angrily, and Damien gives him a withering glare.

“Do you think it’s going to be fun for him to get better?” He looks to Kyle, addressing him personally. “Your life has not gotten easier. Do you know that? You’re going to be reliving the camp every single day, this time with feeling. Tell me you know that, Kyle.”

“I know,” Kyle says.

Damien smiles at him. “Do you think you can do that?”

“If I wanted to die, I would have,” Kyle says, and Cartman feels his stomach twist up even as Damien looks pleased with that response. He’s not quite sure what Damien’s game is drawing answers out of Kyle like this, speaking in commands even while he’s wearing the uniform, but Kyle seems to be responding to it more than Cartman trying to throw bread and whiskey at him uselessly.

Damien nods curtly. “Next time i see you, you’re going to be able to tell me the worst thing you saw at the camp. Will you be able to do that?”

“I’ll do it if you tell me to,” Kyle says, and Damien laughs.

“This is good news.” He holds the glass out to Kyle, who takes it obediently. “Drink some. And don’t smoke Eric’s weed. It will only make the dissociations worse.” At Kyle’s blank look, Damien corrects himself, “The trances. It will make the trances worse.”

“How do you know about those?” Kyle whispers, but Damien doesn’t respond until he’s taken a tiny sip of the glass, a shudder running through his body immediately after. 

“A combination of psychology, sight, and knowing more than the average person,” Damien says. “Is it happening right now?”

Kyle shakes his head, and Damien says, “Good. I didn't think so; you would have to have been exceptionally well-functioning, and I believe you are adequately well-functioning. In that case, Stan and Kenny send their regards. Your keeper here may disagree, but I think you’ll be seeing the two of them quite soon.”

Kyle’s grip on the glass loosens, and Cartman darts forward to catch it before it drops, but Kyle clenches his hand around the glass at the last second. Damien casts Cartman a condescending look and says, “He can take care of things himself.”

“You said they didn’t work here,” Kyle tells Cartman. Cartman thinks he can see something, like a flicker of betrayal and mourning, in Kyle’s eyes for a second, but it disappears quickly.

Damien clears his throat. “No, no. They do not. I am, how would you say, a double agent.”

“Not a very good one,” Cartman mutters, and Damien concedes, “Yes, your least intelligent friend did figure out the secret after three years together.”

“Stan’s in Canada,” Kyle says quietly, and Damien says, “Stan’s irrelevant.”

“It’s true,” Cartman tells Kyle. “Stan is the LVP, but he is, apparently, back with La Resistance.”

Kyle willingly takes another sip, and Damien smiles proudly like this is a huge step forward as opposed to something that could develop into a truly horrible habit. “Why did you let Cartman find you out?”

Cartman perks up a little, and Damien’s surprisingly amiable exterior does not falter. “Do you want to hear a secret that even La Resistance doesn’t know?”

“Okay,” Kyle says dutifully.

Damien holds a finger to his lips to signify how important a secret this is. “I don’t think that Cartman is going to betray us.”

Cartman is annoyed for a second, but Kyle says, “I don’t, either,” and he feels an inordinate amount of pride.

Damien steps forward and holds his hand out to Kyle for him to shake it. Kyle misunderstands and tries to hand him back the glass, but Damien waves it away. “It’s yours.”

“He can’t drink that much,” Cartman says. “Fucking look at him, Damien.”

“I’m sorry. I would hate to tell Kyle to disobey your orders.” Damien tilts his chin out like he knows he has Cartman caught, and Cartman knows when to admit defeat.

“Do what you fucking want, Kyle,” he mutters. “Try not to get alcohol poisoning.”

“With that, I take my leave,” Damien announces. “Kyle, it was a pleasure to see you again. Eric, do not exacerbate his suffering.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” Cartman snaps. 

“I know,” Damien tells him. “A very good night to you both. Enjoy this final hour.”

Cartman follows Damien to the door, blocking his passage and whispering, “What are dissociations?”

Damien looks at him pityingly. “I would suggest, if you want to do him any good, you read first.”

He has no more advice before he yanks the door open and heads off in the direction of the camp proper with a purposeful stride. Cartman watches him go, wondering for the first time if he really is the wrong person to be taking care of Kyle, before he remembers that Damien gave a seventy-pound boy half a glass of whiskey.

Kyle is staring at the glass, tilting the glass from one side to another and watching the amber liquid slosh around. Cartman tells him, “I would strongly advise that you not finish that whole glass,” and Kyle gives him a look of mild irritation that takes Cartman off-guard.

“I know that.”

Cartman’s not sure if commenting on the (minuscule amount of) feistiness will make Kyle want to stop doing that, so he just says, “Whatever, Kyle. Wise freedom.” 

Kyle looks at it intently, seemingly ignoring Cartman when he announces, “It makes it easier to talk.”

“So would Xanax,” Cartman says, and Kyle frowns at him like he doesn’t know what that is. “Xanax?” No recognition shows on Kyle’s face, and Cartman says, “What, did you grow up behind the Berlin Wall?” before he thinks that maybe he won’t smoke weed around Kyle anymore.

“Stop doing drugs,” Kyle says, and Cartman nods quickly.

“Okay. Sure. Yeah.”

Cartman wouldn’t describe Kyle’s expression so much as the presence of a smile as it is the conspicuous absence of sadness. Cartman smiles, uncomfortably as he has to sink his teeth into his cheek to keep himself from crying and hugging Kyle again. Cartman wishes he could be cool like Damien.

Kyle takes another delicate sip, and the same full-body shudder passes through him. He coughs and shakes his head a little, eyes watering, and Cartman says, “Yeah, it’s not for the taste.”

“Being drunk must really be worth it,” Kyle says, staring hard at the glass. Cartman doesn’t respond, and Kyle actually looks up at him like he’s expecting him to speak. “Are you going to work tomorrow.”

Cartman’s not sure what answer Kyle wants him to give, and he feels like a huge disappointment when he says, “Well, yeah,” just managing to stop himself from adding a rude comment like ‘it’s a day, isn’t it?’ “Do you want to talk?”

“We might as well,” Kyle says, taking another sip that doesn’t affect his body so strongly. “I won’t want to otherwise.”

Cartman doesn’t have the heart to give a hypocritical lecture about how drinking isn’t a solution to Kyle’s problems when it’s the only reason that Kyle sounds anything like his old self. From the way Kyle is studying the drink, Cartman thinks Kyle probably already knows this, anyway. He was right - he wouldn’t be alive right now if he didn’t want to be, and he wouldn’t blow it now.

Cartman grabs his wrist, leading him over to the couch where his glass from before is still sitting on the coffee table. He pushes a little on Kyle’s shoulders to signal that he should sit first, and Kyle gets the message easily. Cartman drops down next to him in a fleeting instance of normality and takes a drink in solidarity.

Kyle doesn’t talk for a long time, taking minuscule sips every now and then. Cartman’s not sure if he’s supposed to be carrying this conversation until Kyle says, quietly, “Can we pretend it didn’t happen? For a little bit?”

Cartman’s hand clenches around his drink so tightly that it shakes, whiskey splashing around the sides. “No.”

Kyle’s expression doesn’t change; he nods once, and Cartman knows he did the right thing.

He decides to push further and asks, “Kyle, what are dissociations?”

“I call them trances,” Kyle says. “Everything gets foggier, and the world tilts a little bit, but not all in the same direction. But also, everything looks the same.”

“Like those dreams where you see something that’s not what it is, but you know it’s what it is?” Cartman asks ineloquently. It’s a feeling he knows pretty well even if he can’t put words to it; Kyle almost never shows his face in his dreams, but almost every dream he can’t smoke away is about Kyle. 

Kyle looks at him and says, “Yeah. Just like that. But it’s not a dream. And you know it’s not a dream. But it can’t just not feel like a dream.” He takes another sip, longer this time, and Cartman is beginning to think that he either needs to put a stop to this drinking immediately or make Kyle stop thinking about this. He reaches out to take the glass, and Kyle lets it go easily.

“And you don’t… I mean, I didn’t see things, but things were what they weren’t.” Kyle studies him for a long time and says, “You get it.”

“Maybe,” Cartman says, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever really get it.

“Sometimes they were you,” Kyle whispers, and Cartman already knows the answer when he asks, “Who?”

Kyle turns his attention back to his hostage drink, but he doesn’t make any move to ask for it back, and Cartman is now relatively certain that Kyle will not become an alcoholic. “It wasn’t their faces. It would be, like, if I were working on my knees, and couldn’t see their faces. Then it would be you.”

“Wow,” Cartman says blankly. “How do I come back from that?”

Kyle shakes his head a little. “I didn’t think you were going to be able to.”

“Kyle,” Cartman says, every alarm in his body warning him not to speak. “If it had been my job to do it, I think I probably would have been able to.”

Kyle raises his eyes to meet Cartman’s very slowly. “Remember when you tried to exterminate the Jews in third grade?”

Cartman nods, deeply ashamed, and Kyle says, “I thought you failed because people are better than that, but… I guess you’re just inadequate.”

Cartman makes a weak ‘hah’ noise, not daring to break the eye contact.

“Why am I not in a camp?” Kyle asks finally, and Cartman makes another vague noise of protest like he can push the question away from himself.

Cartman would like, post mortem, for people to say that he did all of this just for Kyle. It’s so much more noble to join to be a hero, but the truth is that if his only motivation were Kyle, he would have failed. It’s why Damien was chosen out of all the members of La Resistance. They’re scum with higher purpose. Without Kyle or La Resistance, Cartman and Damien would probably still be working in the camps, very different people.

“Because I don’t want you to be,” Cartman decides, and Kyle bows his head to him slightly. 

They don’t speak again until Cartman’s clock buzzes, marking the start of another day at the camp. Kyle looks at it, and Cartman thinks that he understands what it means. He stands up a second after Cartman, once again hugging himself tightly, and waits for Cartman to give him some sort of direction.

“Oh,” Cartman says finally, feeling a little like he’s about to leave his dog alone for a day at work. “I’m going to get changed. You need to actually sleep. And eat. I’ll check, and don’t throw it out in the trashcan so it looks like you ate, because that’s super weak, Kyle. Don’t drink anymore. Don’t open the door to anyone, and look like you’re doing something important and shitty if anyone comes in.” He steps in and out awkwardly for a few seconds before he manages to hug Kyle goodbye; Kyle doesn’t reciprocate, but his muscles seem less tense than last time, which is probably progress.

Cartman gets dressed in a hurry, and Kyle is sitting patiently on the couch when Cartman gets out. His mind must be either buzzing with thoughts or completely empty for him to sit without stimulus for so long, and Cartman’s willing to bet that the truth is some weird fluctuation of those two extremes.

Cartman gives him a one-armed hug for which Kyle is mildly relaxed because he’s pretty sure hugs are supposed to cure depression. He kisses Kyle on the top of his head, through Cartman’s old hat, and says, “If anyone comes in and catches you not working, say you’re my sex slave,” before rushing out the door without waiting for a response, absolutely hating the fact that he just said that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Kyle and Cartman adjust to the change, and Kenny deals with the ramifications of his failure.


	4. Waiting for the Worms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> La Resistance is a lot of talking, but once the action starts, it's not going to stop.

_ “In front of every great woman is a powerful man.” _

There’s a pregnant silence as the members of La Resistance avoid Kenny’s eyes. Stan lowers the newspaper to peer over it, trying to read his expression. Wendy, to her credit, looks furious, a comforting hand resting on Kenny’s arm. Kenny is pale, jaw clenched, and he breathes in and out slowly through his nose.

Eventually Clyde breaks the ice, giving Kenny a supportive smile and saying, “They did call you powerful.”

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” Christophe says. “Why would they not attack your credibility? It is what I would do.”

“Exactly,” Gregory says, jumping on Christophe’s argument. “It doesn’t mean you’re an ineffective leader. It means they feel challenged by La Resistance and are fighting back as they know how.”

Kenny takes another deep breath. “Cartman did this.”

“Probably,” Christophe says. “Does that make it better or worse?”

“It’s not even true,” Stan says. “You two are-”

“Well,” Craig interrupts. He falls silent under the warning looks coming at him from all directions. He shrugs once and leans back in his chair like he’s tagging out of the conversation, and Kenny clenches his jaw so hard that it shakes.

“Continue.”

“Well,” Craig says again. “You haven’t been especially effective as of late. If I were in the WCCA, I would be spinning these recent failures against you as well. Let’s face it, Kenny; attempting to free those prisoners a month ago was stupid, and it failed. The people you were trying to help died. They fixed the gas chamber immediately after you destroyed it, and now there’s some weird story circulating about you entering and exiting the camp without doing anything of note.” He looks around the room for support. “All I’m saying is that I would take this as an opportunity to make you look bad. I think we should consider ourselves lucky that they’re blaming this on you alone rather than the efficacy of La Resistance.”

“They’re taunting him,” Wendy snaps. “I have never seen a direct reference to a Jew in an article, and now they’re parading Kyle around as a symbol of them getting one over on you.”

Stan scans the article once more for the now infamous passage:  _ Sources speculate that McCormick’s motivation was the recent relocation of a childhood friend, Kyle Broflovski, who was moved from Telluride to Woodstock in the past week. If this was indeed his goal, he has failed his longtime friend. Others argue that if Broflovski were a priority for La Resistance, the organization would not have moved its headquarters from Colorado to New York in the spring of 2023. _

“I think it’s nice that they’re humanizing him,” Clyde says positively.

Kenny glares at him. “They’re telling the public that I’ve failed my best friend.”

“Didn’t you?” Craig asks. He takes in the expressions of annoyance and concern on his compatriots’ faces and holds up his hands innocently. “Sorry, I didn’t realize revolutionaries sugarcoated things to protect their egos. My mistake.”

“Damien said that Kyle isn’t in immediate danger with Cartman,” Wendy reminds Kenny softly. “They’re just baiting you, honey.”

When Damien returns to their base late that night, he agrees with Wendy’s assessment. He looks completely comfortable with the negative press being directed at Kenny, but the comfort may be due in large part to Craig tugging Damien’s shirt off so he can continue his massage. Damien rarely smiles at anything other than another’s misfortune, but he looks pleased with his situation as he lets his head fall forward.

Stan’s eyes are immediately drawn to an intricate tattoo of Danse Macabre in a ring around his chest, upper arms, and back. Most of Damien’s style is reminiscent of the 1800s, and Stan is surprised to see ink defiling his pale skin. He’s even more surprised to see another tattoo on his abdomen of Botticelli’s map of Hell with the ninth circle of treachery pointing straight down to his crotch. As if Damien can sense Stan’s interest, he lifts his head to smirk at him and says, “It’s inaccurate. If you were wondering. Hell is General Admission.”

“Is Death playing the bagpipes?” Stan asks curiously.

Christophe snorts. “As if Death weren’t bad enough already.”

“Similarly inaccurate,” Damien tells him. “The only music in Hell is Peruvian flute music and my father’s musical numbers. We like to have fun.”

“Sounds like a blast,” Stan says.

Gregory looks thoughtful. “Really? I always imagined medieval organ music. It seems like it would add atmosphere.”

Kenny has been studying the growing list of hypotheses for how to destroy member berries with his arms crossed against his chest, and he turns away reluctantly to face Damien. “What’s the news on Kyle?”

Stan knows that they’re wasting time that should be dedicated to the destruction of member berries, but he understands Kenny’s newfound obsession with Kyle. If the WCCA is so intent on dangling his imprisonment in front of Kenny, it seems likely that they would step up his mistreatment to add injury to insult. Damien has assured them numerous times that he remains a ward of Cartman and is not at risk of being turned into bait, but it seems hard to believe that Cartman would protect him if the camp finds him a higher purpose.

“Sansa and Ramsay are as content as they have ever been,” Damien says apathetically. “I suggest you focus your attentions elsewhere. Many great politicians have been led astray by moot obsession. I would prefer if it did not happen to you.”

Clyde nods a little. “Great ref, buddy.”

Damien gives him a disdainful look. “Did I request your affirmations?”

“You didn’t,” Clyde says bashfully.

“Is it moot?” Wendy asks, tapping her nails on the map of Jordan spread across the table. Gregory has been trying to redirect their attention all night to the US’s attempt to coerce Jordan into what Satan has dubbed ‘The Italy Switcheroo.’

Stan has not been with La Resistance a week, but he can sense tension brewing underneath the surface. The public seems to find Wendy to be a more adept leader, as Fox News has suggested. Within the organization, Christophe and Craig have made it subtly obvious that they believe following Gregory seems wise in light of Kenny’s increasingly tunneled vision. If Kenny doesn’t get it together soon, he will be facing a coup. Stan knows it, the rest of La Resistance knows it, and he finds it unlikely that Kenny does not know it.

“Moot,” Damien says. “Of little practical relevance. Kyle is as safe as we could hope him to be without any intervention from us. His circumstances are, therefore, irrelevant.”

Wendy taps her nails faster. “Kyle is a symbol. We shouldn’t underestimate the value of a symbolic victory. This article,” she says with clear disgust in her voice, “has shown us the importance of a symbolic loss.”

“It’s not like we’re moving forward on any other fronts,” Craig says, rubbing his elbow up and down Damien’s spine. Stan has no idea how Damien managed to finagle a massage from Craig of all people, but his face suggests that this is a special skill of Craig’s. “We’ve got some nice hydrochloric acid-marinated member berries and not much else.”

“We should build a bomb,” Clyde says decisively. Neither Damien nor Craig seem especially perturbed by this statement, but Wendy’s jaw drops, and Kenny whirls around to face Clyde, looking murderous.

“We are not terrorists,” Kenny hisses furiously. “If you ever suggest that again, you will no longer be welcome in this base. Is that clear?”

Craig stops working Damien’s pressure points, resting a hand on either shoulder as he glowers at Kenny. “You don’t have that power. La Resistance is a democracy, and you should stop threatening Clyde because he’s risking just as much as anyone else by being in this useless organization. He’s just saying what we all know is true.”

“It’s not true!” Wendy cries, wrapping an arm around Kenny like she expects him to go off at any time. “It will ruin our reputation.”

“And give us a new reputation,” Craig says. “Of being effective.”

Clyde shuffles his feet, cheeks pink with embarrassment. “I think it seems like a good idea.”

Kenny scoffs and throws his arms out widely, accidentally whacking Wendy in the stomach. “Okay! Okay! Let’s take a vote. Who thinks that La Resistance should build a bomb?”

Clyde and Craig both put their hands in the air, neither of them looking at the other members. Damien smiles ruefully before his own hand follows. Christophe and Gregory exchange a loaded look, and their hands follow. Kenny’s face falls in horror, and he glances to Wendy to make sure that she’s still on his side. She smiles at him sadly, and they both look to Stan although his vote doesn’t matter at this point.

Something tells Stan that he should just vote against the bomb because it has the majority of their support anyway, but it feels like lying, and after thirty seconds of gnawing at his bottom lip, he lifts his hand into the air. 

“Stan,” Wendy says, shocked, and Kenny scoffs disbelievingly.

“I thought we stood for something!”

“We do!” Craig snaps. “We stand for liberation. We doesn’t stand for specific methods of liberation.”

“Terrorism works,” Stan says regretfully, trying to meet Kenny’s eyes to apologize silently. “You know who taught me that?”

“Kyle, yes, I know,” Kenny says, shaking his head slightly. “I highly doubt that he would still feel that way after all he’s been through! He was like nine years old!”

Damien strokes his chin thoughtfully. “Why would you think Kyle disapproves of violence? In my opinion - my expert opinion - I believe that the Jew would want revenge. Is this not so?”

“I’d want revenge,” Craig says. “I’d want to see their flesh melt off their bodies in a firey explosion, then I’d piss on the wreckage.”

“And Craig Tucker is renowned for his empathy,” Wendy says scathingly, and Craig rolls his eyes.

“Because it’s so realistic to expect the best of people.”

Kenny slams his hands down on the map so hard that the entire table rattles. “I will not be part of a terrorist organization.”

“And I don’t want to be part of the losing side,” Craig yells back, and Damien nods like this is an excellent point. “It’s us against a fucking army! You know what beats an army? Bombs!”

“We’ve already taken a vote,” Gregory says in a soothing voice. “I know you don’t want to hear this Kenny, but we could do some real good. Not everyone has a right to live.”

“And we have the right to decide if someone lives or dies?” Wendy asks in a shrill voice.

Damien smiles widely and says, “Well, I do.”

“Why should they get to kill people, and we can’t?” Christophe asks, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Almost simultaneously, Craig, Damien, and Gregory extend their hands to bum a cig. Christophe looks annoyed, but he lights four in his mouth at once before distributing them amongst the other members. He looks at Kenny thoughtfully then lights a fifth and crosses the room to pop it in his mouth. “You are very welcome.”

Kenny grumbles, “Thank you,” before taking a drag so hard that his cheeks fully hollow out. 

Wendy looks at him with slight disappointment clear in her eyes before she looks back to the group. “None of us even know how to build a bomb. Are you suggesting we hire an independent contractor?”

“We have Damien,” Gregory says, but Damien lifts up his hands like he’s staying out of this situation.

“Should you wish to start a house fire, I will happily comply, but an explosion is beyond my realm of expertise. My father, perhaps, would be willing to lend a hand, but satanic powers do leave something to be desired.”

“Like the ability to explode things,” Christophe adds like Kenny might not have gotten it.

Stan raises a hand. “I know someone who can build a bomb.”

He thinks Kenny is struggling not to snarl at him as he asks, “Who, Stan? What is your brilliant idea? Because you’ve proven so helpful!”

“He’s been here five days,” Wendy says soothingly. “Stan, we do appreciate the input, but I would personally prefer not to bring in an external entity for the purposes of terrorism.”

“Lots of terrorists hire other people to construct their bombs,” Craig mutters to Clyde, who nods in agreement.

“He’s not exactly external,” Stan says slowly. “I think we should ask Ike Broflovski. He was getting a degree in biochemical engineering at McGill when I left, which was a week ago.”

“You want to bring Ike back into the US?” Kenny shouts, his voice ringing through the base in a way that makes Stan cringe away from him. “That’s your brilliant idea? Put Ike in direct danger so we can kill hundreds of people?”

“If Ike knew he could help us, he’d never forgive us for not asking,” Stan says. “Yes, he’d be putting himself in danger, but we’re all putting ourselves in danger. Because what La Resistance stands for is worth the risk.” He chews the inside of his cheek and adds, “Plus, he deserves to know about Kyle.”

“Not if it lures him across the border,” Kenny shouts.

Wendy laces her fingers through Kenny’s and whispers something into his ear that makes his shoulders slump. Wendy looks back at Stan with a soft smile and says, “I do think Ike should know about Kyle. I don’t think we should drag him into this conflict after Kenny worked so hard to get him somewhere safe.”

“Ike is a Canadian with the surname ‘McCormick,’” Damien says. “He is at no more risk than you or I. He was but a child when he crossed the border; no records of him will have an accurate portrait.”

Kenny stares at his cigarette furiously before he drops his arms to his side. “I need some air.”

He grabs a jean jacket from the table that truly makes him look like a hick paired with his dark wash jeans, and he stalks out of the room without anyone objecting. Wendy makes a move to follow him, but Stan gets up first, grabbing the closest coat to him before he climbs up the ladder after Kenny.

Clyde calls, “Don’t get it dirty!” before Stan slams the trap door after him.

In the cold night air, Stan finds Kenny sitting on the ground next to the dumpster with one hand wrapped around his legs and the other holding the cigarette an inch away from his lips at all times. Stan sits down next to him, and, in a surprising display of solidarity, Kenny extends the cigarette to him so Stan can take a drag that he doesn’t really want.

“I wanted to be better than the other side,” Kenny says quietly before Stan has the chance to speak. “I know why they want this, but I thought we could win and keep our integrity.”

“One person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist,” Stan quotes, possibly paraphrasing. 

Kenny sighs deeply and nods. “Civilians would die.”

“Civilians are already dying,” Stan says, wrapping an arm around Kenny’s shoulders. “Thousands of them. All the Jews.”

Kenny closes his eyes for a long time. “I don’t think I have the right to decide who lives and who dies.”

“I get it,” Stan says. “Really. I do. It’s like that ethics thing - a train is headed towards ten people, and you can pull a lever so that it only kills one, but it’s through direct intervention? Almost everyone says they’d save the ten people.”

Kenny looks at Stan seriously and says, “That’s the psychopath test. You’re talking about the psychopath test.”

“And isn’t psychopath synonymous with brutally logical? Like artificial intelligence.” Stan mirrors Kenny’s position, wrapping both his arms around his legs. “We have Satan, all the Super Best Friends, and the antichrist on our side. Don’t you think we might have the right to play god? Just a little bit?”

“Stop trying to be Socratic,” Kenny says in a defeated voice. He takes a final drag of the cigarette and stubs it out against the dumpster, wincing when an ember falls on his hand. “I can’t believe more people agree with motherfucking Craig Tucker than they do with me.”

“Everyone knows you’re morally correct,” Stan assures him. “It’s just… maybe the ends justify the means?”

Kenny flexes his hand thoughtlessly while he thinks. Stan is about to speak again when Kenny whispers, “Let’s contact Ike.”

*

Kyle has been living with Cartman for two weeks by the time he manages to gain five pounds. He doesn’t look much better; Cartman still feels sick whenever he looks at him. He is ashamed that he feels that way, but Cartman still feels sick most of the time. He was sort of hoping that rescuing Kyle would cure the constant nausea.

Perhaps it’s because he hasn’t really rescued Kyle so much as lightened his sentence. He’s very aware of the horrors that Kyle has endured, and he knows that standing over him while he forces down protein shakes is nothing on the brutality of the camp. It still doesn’t feel good, and he’s sick of thinking of himself as the bad guy and Kenny as the hero.

He feels a bit guilty for spinning Kenny’s visit to his room as a failure of La Resistance when only Cartman, Kenny and Damien can fully comprehend the truth. He really hasn’t liked the mentions of Kyle in the articles defaming Kenny. It makes him nervous; if the administration is dangling Kyle in front of Kenny like a piece of meat, they won’t take kindly to the knowledge that Cartman hasn’t really enslaved him. Then again, they would never have taken kindly to that.

Furthermore, he’s sick of Kyle’s misery. All rational parts of his brain tell him that it will be much longer than two weeks before he sees a smile on his face, but Kyle still barely speaks unless he’s drinking, and Cartman is beginning to grow insecure about his need to consume alcohol. They drink together most nights, and Cartman usually lets Kyle steer the conversation to topics with which he is comfortable. They often involve the past, like Kyle is slowly beginning to realize that their childhood isn’t a lie constructed by his desperate mind. They’ve spoken in abstract terms about the war; Kyle spends most of his time while Cartman is in the camp devouring any periodical that Cartman will give him, but he only seems more miserable and subdued after a whole day spent reading.

They don’t address anything directly until Damien’s second visit to the room. He shows up during a rainstorm that arrived with no preamble, pounding down on the roof of his home and washing all the color out of the world. Damien looks ghostly white with dark hair plastered to his forehead and his uniform clinging to his skeletal frame.

He asks Kyle how he feels about the idea of La Resistance constructing a bomb, and Cartman is about to shut down the conversation immediately when Kyle says, “I think they should do it.”

Damien nods tersely from where he is wringing out his wet shirt over the sink. Cartman is very aware of Damien’s proclivity for being shirtless. His tattoos really are works of art, and he seems to get some weird enjoyment from being as homoerotic as possible although he’s admitted to Cartman that he’s fucked Henrietta Biggle numerous times. He must be pretty fucking hetero to be attracted to that fat cow. 

They both drink more than usual that night, watching  _ The Simpsons  _ in silence as has become their tradition. Kyle will read the news all day, but he refuses to watch it on the television. Periodicals sensationalize the war more than enough, and the videos create a much more visceral reaction.

A copy of the  _ New York Times  _ is still resting on Kyle’s lap, and Cartman has an arm wrapped around his shoulders stiffly. A WikiHow article on curing depression suggested that physical contact will help, and Cartman’s been trying to work in as many hugs as possible throughout the day, but they’re always so clearly awkward and unreciprocated.

Today, Kyle has finished half a glass of whiskey, and Cartman feels the second that Kyle’s full weight slumps against him. He sits frozen for a second before swallowing quietly and rubbing a thumb over the bones jutting out of Kyle’s shoulder. 

The episode is too topical, and Cartman feels like he’s watching a car crash as yellow cartoon WCCA guards march together like nazis, which, he supposes, is an accurate comparison. 

“Do you acknowledge it?” Kyle asks softly, and Cartman turns to look at him although it brings his nose worryingly close to Kyle’s hair.

“Acknowledge what?”

Kyle lifts his head to look back at Cartman. He can feel his shallow breaths against his face when Kyle says, “That you’re all nazis. Do you admit it?”

Cartman sucks in deeply through his nostrils. “I think that people can talk themselves into anything if they try hard enough.”

“You don’t think that what you’re doing is wrong?”

Cartman brings his free hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nostrils. “It’s hard when you aren’t high on member berries all the time.”

Kyle nods a little like this is the answer he expected. “How do you do it?”

Cartman lowers his hand, meeting Kyle’s eyes again. “Would you believe that I did it to find you?”

“No.”

“Would you believe that I had multiple motivations?”

Kyle nods again, more like a jerk of his head. “Was one of them to kill Jews?”

Cartman means to pull his arm away, but his grip on Kyle’s shoulder tightens possessively. “I wouldn’t have done it if everyone else hasn’t first.”

Kyle snorts bitterly. “You’re a true hero, Eric Cartman.”

Cartman visited Kyle once after the internment camps were announced in 2018, and Kyle was immediately pulled out of school while his parents figured out what to do. No one really thought it was real until the first Jews were pulled out of their homes. Kenny and Stan had both warned Cartman that if he did anything to upset Kyle, they would kill him, but Kenny later advised Cartman that he would hate himself if he didn’t see Kyle again before they left. At the time, they all thought that ‘leave’ meant ‘move to Canada,’ but that did not prove to be the case.

Cartman went alone in the middle of the night. He had expected the Broflovskis to be hiding in an attic, but Kyle was sleeping in his own bed like he had his whole life. Kyle was so full of rage and hatred, and he rejected the idea that he and his family would be intimidated into fleeing the country, which Cartman thought was idiotic and didn’t hesitate to tell him. It devolved into a fight that now feels completely surreal; it was so ordinary for them, but more important than Cartman could have possibly imagined. 

He hated Kyle for not leaving the country immediately. It was not a time to be taking a stand for his principles; it was a time to make sure that he didn’t die a horrible, drawn out death. In the end, Cartman stormed out the front door, a dangerous risk that he regretted for years after although it did not directly contribute to their capture. Before he left, he warned Kyle that if they ever met again, it would be with Cartman as a guard and Kyle as his prisoner. Kyle told him that he wouldn’t expect any less of him, and they parted for nine years.

Cartman was, in retrospect, completely right, and he even knew it at the time although nothing could have prepared him for the feeling when Kenny told him that the Broflovski house had been targeted the past night. Stan was furious at Cartman, pushing all his anger at the world onto Cartman as if he personally had turned them into the police, but Kenny said that he thought Cartman deserved to know since he cared about Kyle too. Cartman had denied this and faked a laugh which caused Kenny to walk away from him in disgust, and he threw up bile for the first time that afternoon.

Cartman throws up later that night, whether from the typical nausea or drinking he’s not sure. His brain doesn’t feel too fuzzy, but he’s sure that he must be the drunkest he’s ever been because he felt no discomfort with his proximity to Kyle on the couch. There are tears in his eyes that always accompany vomiting, and Kyle sits next to him on the bathroom floor silently, appearing not to be disgusted by the scent.

Kyle always used to be the cleanest guy Cartman knew. He could barely stand being in Cartman’s childhood room with moldy dishes and old laundry, but Cartman has smelled the sleeping quarters in the camps, and he supposes that Kyle had the choice of adjusting to filth or dying. The quarters would have been disgusting no matter what, but the presence of people too sick to make it to the bathroom before defecating turned it into something more disgusting than the filthiest pigsty. 

Cartman slumps against the toilet seat, chest heaving from the exertion, and Kyle flushes the toilet like this is a routine that they’ve perfected. He waits until Cartman has caught his breath before reaching to his face to wipe what must be vomit from the corner of his mouth then wipe his hand on Cartman’s shirt.

“That’s disgusting,” Cartman mumbles, his hand catching Kyle’s and holding it against his chest without thinking. 

“I know.”

Cartman raises his head to look at Kyle, still clutching his hand, and wonders if it’s just because of his distorted vision that Kyle looks so close. He doesn’t think he’s drunk anymore; vomiting has a way of making him feel stone cold sober within seconds. 

“That was your most pleasant vomit yet,” Kyle tells him, his voice falling inexplicably into a whisper. “It smells like whiskey and raspberries.”

“That would make sense,” Cartman whispers back. “All I ate today was whiskey and raspberries.”

Kyle’s lip twitches in the closest thing Cartman has seen to a smile since he arrived, and Cartman’s stomach lurches. Maybe it’s his heart; he’s not sure. It feels very similar either way.

He tells himself it’s because physical contact makes people happy. He really doesn’t want to want this as much as he does, and the feelings are so conflicting that his head hurts. Cartman does the only thing that he thinks will make it feel better, and maybe he’s a horribly selfish person, but he leans forward to press his lips against Kyle’s without brushing his teeth first.

Kyle doesn’t move at all, but he doesn’t pull away, which seems like the best outcome that Cartman could have hoped for. Cartman’s hand comes up to cup his face, deepening the kiss until Kyle gives a broken little moan and whispers Cartman’s name, the movement of his lips against Cartman’s almost as good as real reciprocation.

Cartman isn’t sure when Kyle starts shaking increasingly violently, and Cartman squeezes his hand like it will be enough to make Kyle calm down. It doesn’t ease the shaking, and Cartman feels something wet on Kyle’s cheeks. His thumb moves to wipe it away from one side. In an action that Cartman is sure means that he’s still drunk because he has to believe that he would never do it sober, Cartman pulls away from Kyle’s lips to lick up his cheek, moaning at the taste of salty tears on his tongue.

He licks him again then rubs his nose against his cheek like he’s nuzzling him. Kyle doesn’t stop crying, and Cartman’s tongue darts out to give him another small lick before he returns to Kyle’s lips, making him taste the saltiness of his own tears.

Kyle still doesn’t pull back, and it takes Cartman far too long to become completely horrified by his own actions. He pulls back immediately, feeling more nauseous than before he threw up, and starts apologizing profusely.

“I’m so sorry,” Cartman whispers, dropping Kyle’s hand, which he retracts into his lap hesitantly. “I’m so sorry.  You weren’t ready for that. I never should have- I’m so sorry. Shit. Fuck. I’m the worst kind of person.”

Kyle doesn’t look at him, just stares at the ground underneath Cartman’s knee. Cartman keeps swearing and apologizing until Kyle says softly, “I thought you wanted to treat me like I’m normal.”

“I do,” Cartman says. “But you aren’t.”

Kyle nods a little, still staring at the floor, before he uses the toilet to pull himself to his feet. The tears have dried on his cheeks, and Cartman feels selfishly grateful that he can’t see the glistening trails of his saliva.

“I need to go to bed,” Kyle tells him before walking out of the bathroom without waiting for a response.

Cartman thought he would toss and turn for hours that night, but he falls asleep as soon as he sinks into the couch cushions and pulls his furry blanket against himself. He wakes up feeling disgusted with himself and wishes that he’d been forced to spend the night awake as penance. 

Kyle doesn’t bring up what happened, and Cartman doesn’t try to hug him the next day. When Kyle drinks the following night, Cartman stays sober, which is truly the worst state of mind of all the states of mind. This goes on for a few days; their conversations come to a halt besides commenting occasionally on how lousy  _ The Simpsons  _ are or what press La Resistance has gotten that day.

Kyle never really hugged back when Cartman tried, not that Cartman really expected him to. He got the best he could have hoped for - Kyle didn’t pull away, and he occasionally rested his weight against him like it was hard to stand without Cartman. 

A whole week of uncomfortability later, Cartman decides to go to Stephen Stotch’s room with other guards instead of spending the night in silence with Kyle. He tells himself that this is because people will realize the correlation of Kyle’s arrival and Cartman ducking out of all social interaction, then he reminds himself that he can always say he’s spending all his free time raping or torturing Kyle.

He just really doesn’t want to say that.

The night after, he feels a weight lean against him and wonders for a second if Mr. Kitty is alive after all because it’s the only reason he can think of for a living creature being willing to initiate contact with him. His mom used to hug him, and Heidi Turner dated him in fourth grade on her own free will, but there hasn’t been much beyond that.

Cartman’s stomach flips, and he wraps his arm around Kyle’s shoulders in a way that feels too calculated. He wants Kyle to have the physical contact that Cartman knows is important; he’s gone long enough without it to see it’s importance. It may not be enough to alleviate even one percent of Kyle’s suffering, but Cartman doesn’t know if anything else would work better.

Cartman whispers, “I’m sorry,” as they both stare at the TV, and Kyle doesn’t respond, but his hand comes up to tangle in Cartman’s shirt like he thinks he’s liable to disappear at any second.

They start to talk again, and it feels much more real now that Cartman is sober all the time. Kyle still drinks, and he gives Cartman this carefully scrutinizing look whenever he abstains like he knows perfectly what his reasons are. He probably does.

Kyle has only taken a few sips of the drink, just enough to loosen his tongue, when he sets it down on the coffee table softly. He still doesn’t look at Cartman when he tells him, “You can do it again.”

The first thing Cartman thinks is that he would love to be drunk right now; he’s not sure how he ever felt comfortable with the idea of kissing a living skeleton who has endured years of trauma. It doesn’t really establish any sort of mood besides abject sorrow. 

Still, his mouth is drawn to Kyle’s neck, who leans his head back like he’s granting Cartman access. 

It becomes routine for them. Kyle never actively responds although Cartman always waits for him to grant him permission, and Cartman has started kissing all around his face and neck instead of focusing on his unmoving lips.

It’s a long time before Kyle’s lips move back in a stuttering response. Cartman has lost track of the days, but he estimates that Kyle is around 110 pounds, which suggests that it’s been a long time. They’ve decided that he has to stop gaining weight at this point - enough that he doesn’t look like he’s on the brink of death at every second, but not enough that a guard might worry that Cartman is treating him well if he sees him. His hair has begun to grow back although he wears Cartman’s old hat most of the time, and Cartman keeps an electric razor bathroom sink for if company ever calls. Damien has commented on how healthy Kyle looks as a warning, but he agrees that Cartman can always say that he doesn’t enjoy sharing a home with something disgusting. 

Cartman knows it’s a stupid risk. Kyle does need the extra weight, but there is no good reason for letting him keep his hair. If anyone becomes suspicious that Cartman is treating him well, he’s fucked. The newspapers haven’t mentioned him in some time, instead focusing on the lack of activity coming from members of La Resistance, but Kyle is still the highest profile prisoner in the country.

He loves his hair, though. He loves that he looks a little bit like the Kyle that he remembers, and judging by the way that Kyle will absent-mindedly touch his hair while they sit in silence, Kyle is happy that it’s back. He spent a lot of time staring at himself in the mirror like he was trying to reconcile the fact that the boy in glass is nothing more than a reflection of himself.

It’s not live Kyle is back to normal. Not even close, but sometimes Cartman can pretend that he has the old Kyle back when he kisses him, which doesn’t seem to make sense because he would never have done this with the old Kyle. 

The first time Kyle responds, Cartman remembers hazily thinking: oh, this is why he spent so many years dreaming about Kyle. This is why he dedicated his life to finding him and getting him out of the camp. Because something deep inside him has wanted to kiss him since he was a child, and that something never had a chance of not falling in love with Kyle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: Cartman realizes the dangers of keeping Kyle in the camp, and he takes his revenge a step too far.


End file.
